Stitching for the Long Haul
Stitching the Situation was awarded an INSITE Fund grant through RedLine Contemporary Art Center as part of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Regional Regranting program for 2024-2025. “Stitching for the Long Haul” partners this project with people in Colorado living with Long COVID, their caregivers, and researchers working to understand and treat the condition. We aim to connect with at least 25 people who are willing to share their Long COVID experience, utilizing our Story Network method, to accessibly and COVID-consciously collect, document, and present each person’s stories. We will work together to plan a hybrid public event & exhibition to be held in late summer or fall 2025 in the Denver metro area.
There are multiple ways to participate:
-share your story
-create images from others’ stories
-work with other long haulers and COVID-conscious folks to plan a public hybrid event to present the stories & images, and advocate for more support
-join our community of stitchers working to document the US pandemic data via cross stitch tapestries that visualize the effects of COVID and honor the lives of those we’ve lost.
-share this project with your network
Details on each are below. Participation for some of these are financially compensated, thanks to our grant funding. Anonymity is ALWAYS an option for anyone who would like to keep their participation private.
How to Get Involved:
Boulder Covid Stories book, inspiration for the block to be stitched.
Share your story
We invite you to share your experiences in any format that makes sense to you. That could be writing, photos or images, recording yourself talking, or we could have a conversation via email or phone. These will be shared at the 2025 event. Compensation is $25 per person.
Digitial illustration
Create designs
If you are an artist, designer, or illustrator, sign up to create designs based on the stories that have been shared with us. These will be displayed at the 2025 event, and translated into patterns for volunteers to stitch later on. Compensation is $50 per design.
Finished Block
Volunteer to stitch
Sign up to stitch a block on behalf of folks who, for a variety of reasons, cannot stitch themselves. We are committed to centering the stories of those most impacted by the COVID pandemic. This is on a volunteer basis.
Are you a community leader, teacher, or organizer?
We will be exhibiting our work together in late summer/fall 2025. The planning for this event will be guided by COVID-safe protocols, and, ideally, folks living with Long COVID. Anyone who would like to help shape this event is invited to do so, and the planning/advisory committee will be compensated for their time. We have budgeted for a committee of 5 people ~10 hours each at $25/hour, or $250/person.
Additionally, if you would love to bring this network to your community of Long Haulers and caregivers, please reach out to me via email to discuss how this project can come to your area, and bring local people together.
How this works:
We can implement the network in a couple ways:
1- You can share this page with your network, and recruit storytellers and designers, and possibly stitchers, too, from your local area. We can discuss how to archive and exhibit these stories within your local community after next year’s event, which will require collaboration with other organizations or possible community funding partners.
2- We can coordinate our roster of designers and stitch volunteers to work with storytellers in your community.
3- You might have a better idea that fits your own community’s needs because each community knows themselves better than anyone else—get in touch if you would like to adapt this work to your needs.