The UK AIDS Memorial Quilt comes to Wakefield
For the first time outside London, the entire UK AIDS Memorial Quilt will be on public display – free to visit, 4 to 7 June 2026.
Wakefield Exchange will show the full collection across four days in June, with individual panels also on view at venues across the district including The Hepworth Wakefield, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Pontefract Castle and The Art House.
The Wakefield display includes new panels added to the collection since it was last shown in full at Tate Modern in June 2025, where 70,000 people came to see it over five days. The Quilt now represents over 570 people lost to HIV and AIDS.
New panels, seen publicly for the first time
Among the new additions are panels with long histories of their own, some made during the epidemic and only now finding their place in the collection, others newly made to commemorate someone they loved.
There are panels for Billy Wilkes, who died in Cardiff in 1988, made by his sister at the time but never added to the collection until now; for Derek Allan Fraser, who worked at London Lighthouse and whose panel, made by friends and colleagues, features 70 hand-crafted patches bordered with Fraser tartan; for John Murphy, whose partner Pascal recently donated a panel to the collection that was made in 1994 by volunteers at a Cornwall HIV support centre; and for Ian Craddock – a long-serving Food Chain volunteer who died in 2002, remembered by fellow volunteers who made his panel last year.
Also new is a block of eight panels created this year by William Hampson, commemorating 38 individuals. Hampson received his own HIV diagnosis in 2020, which led him to the newspaper archives of the epidemic and to the real lives behind the headlines. The panels range from individual tributes – among them performance artist Leigh Bowery, gay rights activist Martin Johnson, and graphic designer Ivan Cohen who was photographed with Princess Diana at the opening of the UK’s first dedicated AIDS ward – to collective memorials for those whose names appeared only as tabloid copy.
Visiting the exhibition
The display runs from Thursday 4 June to Sunday 7 June, with free entry throughout.
- On Thursday evening there is a panel discussion with speakers from the AIDS Memorial Quilt Partnership, ACT UP Leeds and the NHS.
- On Saturday 6 June at 2pm, a Reading of the Names will take place at WX, at which poet Andrew McMillan will present a new poem written in response to the Quilt.
- Free quilt-making workshops run across the weekend.
Plan your visit by visiting here – Wakefield Exchange