Queerguru is so sad to hear of the death of Ally Van Tillo (formerly Alastair Hume), founder of the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt.  He had been inspired by the American Names Project Memorial Quilt to create a UK version, and co-ordinated the making of panels from across the country, bringing together grieving families, friends and lovers who had nowhere else to turn.

Its first full display in Hyde Park in 1994 was such a moving event, and it has continued in part since then.  In fact, only 4 days ago, the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt was exhibited for the first time in its existence on view at the Glasgow contemporary art venue Tramway through October 4. It’s like a coming home for Scottish Van Tillo

At a time when government and much of the media still treated people with HIV as figures of shame rather than loss, the Quilt put names and human stories to the crisis. It insisted that those who had died – often in secrecy – were people with full lives, passions, friendships and families, remembered by people who put their love into every stitch. That work helped shift public attitudes and pushed those in power to finally take the pandemic, and the people affected by it, seriously. This work continues today. Medicine has changed HIV but understanding has not kept pace, and the challenge left is the ongoing stigma that surrounds it. It is particularly meaningful for those of us who lost too many friends and loved ones in the pandemic

Ally never sought credit for this. Those who worked alongside him remember someone who saw the Quilt as belonging to the hundreds of makers and volunteers who stitched it, as a project of collective grief and activism rather than individual achievement.

Siobhán Lanigan, Chair of the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt Partnership, said:

“Ally’s vision and dedication gave the UK a way to remember people the country had too often chosen to forget. Everything the Partnership does today carries on the work he started, and we all owe him, and the panel makers and volunteers who made the Quilt with him, an enormous debt.”

Please watch this space as Robert Malcolm, Queerguru’s Scottish Contributing Editor, will be viewing the Quilt shortly.