Summary
Organization name
Stitching the Situation
2020
Tax id (EIN)
93-4053024
Category
Arts, Culture & Humanities
Organization Size
Small Organization
Address
637-B S Broadway #244BOULDER, CO 80305
CO, US
US
Since beginning this project during lockdown in 2020, our work has grown. What started as artist Heather Schulte working on her own in her home has expanded to a nationwide community working together to commemorate experiences of COVID19 through embroidery (and more--details below). To meet this expansion, and ensure this project's future, we are directing funds raised toward establishing a sustainable, responsive website to reflect breadth of our work and appropriate storage for our growing collection of materials and artwork. This includes:
--A Website overhaul. We need to reorganize our website to be more easily navigate, clearly express our work and how people can get involved, and is accessible to everyone.
--Storage. We must purchase archival storage materials for our growing collection of embroidered pieces. The completed work now numbers over 60 individual pieces, which involve hundreds of feet of fabric and millions of stitches.
--Organization. Consult with archivists to create a publicly searchable system to organize our physical and digital materials. This will be hosted on our revamped website, and aims to engage the public with comprehensive information about our work as well as provide resource material for researchers and historians.
We have been applying to various grants to help fund this work, but have not yet received any significant funding toward this particular effort. This is due in large part to the removal of many federal grants that were targeted toward supporting projects documenting marginalized communities and people, which creates more competition for the much smaller pool of private funding. Most smaller projects, like ours, get overlooked in the current situation, and we hope individual donations can help kick start the work we need to do.
Mission
Stitching the Situation commemorates the COVID-19 pandemic and its ongoing effects through collective storytelling. We stitch each reported COVID case and death, record individual stories of the pandemic, and illustrate these through drawings and cross stitch patterns. With these methods, our project creates a tapestry of diverse experiences, amplifies stories of those impacted, and honors collective grief. Through collaboration, we offer solace, connection, and a tangible memorial to the lives lost, serving as a creative response and real-time archive of this unprecedented crisis.
We envision a world where the collective experiences and grief of the COVID-19 pandemic are cared for, memorialized and honored. We aspire to create a diverse and accessible community where individuals can find healing, camaraderie, and support amidst the challenges of this crisis. Through our ongoing project, we aim to foster empathy, understanding, and resilience, while preserving a lasting archive of this historic period for future generations.
We partner with medical organizations, public health institutions, community organizations, and more, to ensure individual experiences inform best practices and policies, center human experiences of COVID, and provide space for leaders to witness the impact of their decisions. We aim to amplify awareness of the resources available, insist on ever expanding accessibility to them, and demand ongoing research and development of effective treatment, emergency response (both medical and of the broader impacts of pandemics and other natural disasters), and long term recovery.
Background Statement
Stitching the Situation began with one small blue cross stitch, made by artist Heather Schulte, on March 18, 2020. From that first mark, recording our first known case of COVID19 in the US (at the time), bloomed a nationwide community of people working together to not only document the recorded data of the virus' immediate impact, but also visualize the human experiences of the pandemic and its ongoing impacts. With thousands of stitches in each individual piece, images are rendered to depict these stories through the work of many hands.
Media gallery
Organization Data
BOULDER, CO 80305