Stitching Stories: Panel Discussion on the Terry Higgins Memorial Quilt
14 May 19:30 - 20:30
Tuesday 14th May
7pm: Doors open
7.30pm to 8.30pm : Panel discussion
£5 + booking fee, includes a drink on arrival
Please join us in the Fitzrovia Chapel for a special panel discussion in celebration of the Terry Higgins Memorial Quilt, on display in the chapel between 8th-17th May.
Chaired by Richard Angell, Chief Executive of Terrence Higgins Trust, the event will be a chance to learn more about the aspects of Terry’s life represented in the quilt, as well as the history of AIDS memorial quilts and the broader tradition of memorialisation, storytelling and activism through quilting.
Panellists:
Chair – Richard Angell
(he/ him)
Richard became Chief Executive of Terrence Higgins Trust in March 2023. He was previously the charity’s Campaigns Director and interim Head of Policy & Public Affairs. Richard led a year’s worth of activity to mark 40 years since the creation of the Terrence Higgins Trust, including the creation of the Terry Higgins Memorial Quilt. Other key successes include an integral role in securing £20 million Government funding for opt-out HIV testing in em
ergency departments and leading on work to successfully overturn discriminatory exclusions in blood donation for gay and bisexual men and those primarily from the UK’s black communities.
Dr Jess Bailey
(she/ her)
Dr Jess Bailey (she/her, @publiclibraryquilts) is an art historian, writer, and third-generation hand quilter. She teaches in the History of Art Department at University College London and holds a PhD from UC Berkeley. Bailey is the author of Many Hands Make a Quilt: Short Histories of Radical Quilting (Common Threads Press, 2021) and runs the popular social media account Public Library Quilts. She believes how we speak about the past directly affects our collective futures.
Paula Doyle
(she/ her)
Paula has been a full-time quilter for over 25 years, and enjoys all aspects of quiltmaking under the Green Mountain Studio label in Surrey. She spent her childhood in Brazil, was taught to use a sewing machine at the age of nine and made her first patchwork cushion at the age of ten under instruction from her grandmother.
Paula was approached in 2013 to design a quilt project to celebrate the 800th anniversary of the sealing of the Magna Carta at Runnymede, where the terms of the Magna Carta were set forth and agreed between King John and his Barons in 1215. This resulted in the formation of the Magna Carta Quilt Association, and the Magna Carta Quilters, a group of 25 talented quilters who produced a series of 8 quilts for the anniversary festivities at Royal Holloway University. The Magna Carta Quilts have since been on display in Houston and Chicago as well as other venues around the UK, and are now in the permanent collection of The Quilters Guild of the British Isles.
Paula worked with Terry’s partner and co-founder of Terrence Higgins Trust, Rupert Whitaker OBE, to design and produce the “Rupert’s Tribute” panel of the quilt.
Stephen Hart
Stephen is an actor, writer and YouTuber who fell into being an activist by accident after writing and starring in his one man show Shadowed Dreamer, which ran in New York for 9 months, closing off Broadway in 2010. Since then, he’s started his YouTube channel Hart Talks, which follows him as a Positive Voices speaker for the Terrence Higgins Trust (THT), the London Ambassador for Stamp Out Spiking, a presenter on the radio show The HIV Hour on Radio Reverb, singing with the Joyful Noise Choir and The West End Musical Choir, and his love of theatre and his cats Gracie and Gus. Steven is planning for Shadowed Dreamer to tour UK theatres later in 2024, 14 years after its New York run.
