Homotopia Supports World Aids Day Milestone With Special Arts Commission

Liverpool's annual LGBT+ festival Homotopia is supporting the 30th anniversary of World AIDS Day with a special arts commission.

World AIDS Day takes place annually on 1 December. This year marks its third decade and Liverpool will host a number of fringe events as part of Homotopia Festival.

Now in its 15th year, Homotopia Festival is an annual celebration of local, national and international LGBT+ arts and culture. The four-week festival was launched last week and runs until Saturday 1 December. The theme of this year's event is I Will Survive.

As part of this year's festival and to mark World AIDS Day's 30-year milestone anniversary, Homotopia commissioned local artist Liz Sherbourne to create a new panel for the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt.

The UK AIDS Memorial Quilt is an irreplaceable piece of social history. Through specially decorated panels, it tells the stories of many of those lost in the early days of the HIV AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s.

The specially created quilt panel will be on display on Saturday 24 November at the screening of the documentary, After 82, at the Museum of Liverpool, Pier Head.

It will then be on display at St George's Hall Liverpool on Saturday 1 December, where it will be shown as part of Sahir House's World AIDS Day Vigil in the Concert Room. Supported by Homotopia, the vigil will feature speeches, poetry recitals and moments of remembrance.

The panel will be joined together with seven other panels produced in Merseyside, to become one big quilt, before being admitted into the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt catalogue.

World AIDS Day is an opportunity for people worldwide to unite in the fight against HIV; to show support for people living with HIV; and to commemorate those who have died from an AIDS-related illness. Founded in 1988, World AIDS Day was the first ever global health day.

Homotopia commissioned a new panel for the UK AIDS Quilt. The work features the wording 30 Years of Positive Change; a Liver Bird whose wings carry the names of Liverpool, Knowsley, St Helens, Wirral and Sefton - areas supported by Sahir House; and a Red Ribbon, the universal symbol of awareness and support for people living with HIV.

Homotopia Festival Guest Curator Cheryl Martin explained: "I wanted Homotopia Festival to be a part of World AIDS Day. When we learned about the plans Sahir House had to restore, bring together, and display the North West panels of the UK Names Project, sometimes known as the UK AIDS Quilt, I wanted to commission a panel to show how far we've come in terms of living with HIV since the 1980s.

"I was a reporter in the 1980s and I covered the AIDS crisis. Now with 30 years of positive change later, people living with HIV can be healthy and live to be 100. I would never have imagined that three decades ago. The new panel is beautiful and vivid, with a powerful message. We can't think Liz enough for her stunning interpretation of our vision."

Artist Liz Sherbourne added: "It has been a real privilege to work with Homotopia and Sahir House to create the new quilt panel, which is now a part of an archive that is both powerful and poignant. Positive change is represented by the rainbow road leading directly to the World AIDS Day Red Ribbon.

"The panel features three main figures, inspired directly from the Now and Then oral history project which saw Merseyside people affected by HIV share their stories from the past three decades. The hearts are a direct reference to the 1992 Love and Passion campaign (designed by Andrew Dineley) to celebrate changing attitudes to HIV. I've incorporated a lot of powerful messages in the quilt which are all still very relevant to the movement."

Serena Cavanagh is Health Promotion Lead at Sahir House, she added: "It is great that Homotopia chose to support and recognise the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt project by commissioning a new panel which carries on the legacy. This year's 30th World AIDS Day campaign shows how far we have come and strengthens the message of hope and activism."

A selection of panels from the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt project will be on display in venues across Liverpool, for more information visit http://www.aidsquiltuk.org/liverpool/

Homotopia Festival 2018 features theatre, music, visual art, contemporary dance, debate, youth and community participation, heritage and film, making the it one of the key cultural festivals in the region.

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