The idea for an AIDS Quilt Project actually began in 1985 at the annual San Francisco candlelight parade. These had been held every year since 1979 to remember the assassinations of Harvey Milk and George Moscone in 1978.

While planning the 1985 parade, activist Cleve Jones learned that more than a thousand San Franciscans had died from AIDS. To try and assess the impact of this on the community he asked marchers to write the names of friends they had lost on a piece of cardboard. At the end of the march, Jones and others taped the pieces of cardboard onto the wall of the San Francisco Federal Building.

The effect was stunning. For the first time since the disease emerged in 1981 here was a clear visual expression of its impact. And it was the patchwork effect that gave Jones an idea on how to move this forward.

A year later – in June 1986 – Jones and some of his friends had made a quilt in memory of one of their friends, Marvin Feldman. It was three foot wide and six foot long – the size of a human grave – and decorated with items and images that they associated with their friend. In June 1987, Jones and a few other people formally launched the NAMES Project and people began sending in quilts from across America.

Four months after its official launch, in October 1987, the quilt was put on public display for the first time on the National Mall, Washington D.C. to coincide with the Second March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. Despite the relative novelty of the project, 1,920 panels were displayed.

The AIDS Memorial Quilt, demonstrating just some of the impact of the disease in the USA. Source: National Institutes of Health.

In October 1988 it was displayed in Washington again. This time it had 8,288 panels – a testament to the Reagan administration’s criminal neglect of the issue.

On 1st December – World AIDS Day – 1988, the Australian Quilt Project was launched, with a display of 35 panels in Sydney’s Martin Place. A further 944 panels were added in its lifetime, making it the largest Quilt outside the USA.

The Quilt Project appears to have played a lesser role in the UK, starting in the late 80s and growing to 48 panels.

In 1989 the documentary Common Threads was released. It offers an amazing insight into the experiences of people with AIDS – young and old – in the 1980s. Unsurprisingly, it won the Academy Award for Best Documentary. If you haven’t seen it then you owe it to yourself and those who died to track it down and watch it. A trailer is below.