AIDS Memorial Quilts Arrive in Knowsley: Honouring Loss, Love, and Resistance
Tue 8 Jul, 2025
This July, Knowsley bears witness to an extraordinary and deeply moving piece of living history. For the first time, a selection of the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt will be exhibited in the borough, marking a powerful moment of remembrance, resistance, and reflection.
For the first time, a selection of the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt will be exhibited in Knowsley from 14 to 19 July. This deeply moving installation, presented in partnership with Liverpool-based charity Sahir and AIDS Memorial Quilts UK, brings together art, grief, activism, and remembrance in one of the most powerful forms imaginable: community-made textiles that speak volumes.
Each quilt panel tells a story. Football scarves, teddy bears, handwritten letters, song lyrics, and photographs: each stitch a memory, a protest, a love letter to a life lost. The quilt began in San Francisco in the 1980s, born of desperation, rage, and love in the face of political apathy and public silence. Families and friends refused to let their loved ones be forgotten. In time, communities across the UK followed suit.
Now, decades later, these panels are more than just art. They are living archives of grief and solidarity.
“This exhibition matters because stories matter,” says Darren Begley of Shakespeare North Playhouse. “Several panels were created in memory of people from the Liverpool City Region, which makes this exhibition especially meaningful. It is important that we continue to create space where every member of our community can be seen, heard and remembered.”
In a borough often overlooked in national narratives, Knowsley is stepping forward to embrace a legacy that stretches beyond its borders but resonates deeply within. The exhibition’s arrival is no coincidence. It reflects years of commitment from organisations like Sahir, which for over 40 years has supported people living with and affected by HIV. Commissioned by Knowsley Council, the charity works not only to provide vital services, but to challenge the stigma that still surrounds HIV to this day.
“For over 40 years, Sahir has stood with those affected by HIV—not just in solidarity, but in action,” said Gill Clotworthy, LGBTQ+ Services and Operations Manager at Sahir. “We’ve witnessed the fear, the silence, and the loss. We’ve also witnessed the fierce love, grassroots resistance, and defiant joy that communities like ours have brought to the fight.“
To her and to many, these quilts are more than memorials, they’re a call to remembrance and action.
“The UK AIDS Memorial Quilt is not just a piece of history—it’s a fabric of our shared grief, our outrage, our resilience,” Clotworthy says. “These quilts hold names and memories that deserve to be shouted from rooftops, not buried in shame. They are a testimony to what happens when political neglect meets community strength.
Here in the Liverpool City Region, we know what it means to come together when no one else shows up. We know what it means to care radically, loudly, and without apology. We’re proud to honour these lives lost, and prouder still to keep their stories alive.”
That urgency, to remember, to resist, to reflect, is stitched into every inch of fabric.
And while the exhibition speaks to a particular moment in history—the devastation of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s and 1990s—it also reminds us of the present. People are still living with HIV. Stigma persists. Global access to treatment remains uneven. The fight is far from over.
As Siobhán Lanigan of the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt Partnership Foundation reminds us, “The quilts were made to be seen, and we aim to show it in as many places as possible. It celebrates all the lives lost to AIDS in the 1980s and 1990s and reminds us that there is still much to be done to break down HIV stigma and eliminate the virus worldwide.”
In a time when so much feels disconnected and impersonal, this exhibition draws us into something intimate, real, and human. It asks us to slow down, look closely, and listen to the stories stitched into its seams.
The UK AIDS Memorial Quilt will be on display at Shakespeare North Playhouse from 14 to 19 July, free and open to all. Whether you’ve lived through the crisis, lost someone to it, or are learning this history for the first time, this exhibition offers a space to honour those who were lost, and those who are still here.
Take the time. Stand before the panels. Let the stories sink in. This is more than history. It’s a call to remember, to care, and to never be silent again.
