BARN QUILTS ARE ART HEALTH

The Healing Arts

Two Vermillion organizations were funded to create quilting projects harnessing the arts to promote overcoming COVID-19 and influenza vaccine hesitancy. Together, the Vermillion Cultural Association (VCA) and Creative Care, LLC secured a $75,000 grant from the CDC Foundation.

Shannon Cole, Executive Director of VCA, with Ariadne (Ari) Albright, owner of Creative Care, collaborated to use the arts to improve public health practices such as mask-wearing and receiving flu and COVID-19 vaccines.

“This grant is an incredible achievement for us,” Cole says. “We’re a small, regional arts organization, and now we get to lead a nationally funded project with statewide impact. It’s a big deal, and a big responsibility.”

VCA’s Barn Quilt Project: South Dakota Strong reached nine communities across South Dakota, including rural areas with lower vaccination rates. Community members who attended the art events created a barn quilt design and wrote about their experiences of the pandemic.

Artists facilitating the project include local residents and graduates of the University of South Dakota’s Arts in Health graduate and undergraduate certificate programs. The Barn Quilt Project sessions ran through April, culminating in an exhibition of select artworks and narratives in the First Dakota Coyote Gallery in Vermillion.