Storing collections can take a lot of work. We have recently started on a storage project that will take at least a year to finish. It is a project that has come from the gay community and it involves the acquisition of 109 quilts forming part of the Australian AIDS Memorial Quilt Project. The PHM decided to acquire the collection because of its significance in the community as a memorial to those who lost their lives to AIDS. The quilts are part of the public health and medicine focus within the Powerhouse collection. The AIDS Quilt Foundation no longer had the space or resources to store the quilts. As a result a collaborative project has commenced between us and the gay community. Some community members have kindly volunteered to assist with the cataloguing of the quilts and preparing them for storage in partnership with some volunteers from the Powerhouse Discovery Centre.

Each quilt is 3.5 m² and contains 4-10 panels. These panels were made by family and friends of people who died of AIDS from 1982 until 2003, when the project finished. This photo shows the volunteers learning our complex procedure of cataloguing each panel. After cataloguing, the volunteers will attach a Velcro hanging system to each quilt, then fold each quilt for storage. A support tray made by the volunteers of corflute, aluminium tube and queblocks joints will be used to store each quilt. We need 540 pool noodles (wrapped in cloth) to pad out the folds for the quilts. The quilts will soon be housed in our store, and be available for loan to the community.