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Karen Brackett on quilts for South African children
Continuing an exchange program that began in 1996, 19 Skidmore students and a professional team of six toured South Africa for 27 days in May and June. The program, led by Karen Brackett of the Educational Studies Department, is designed to give students a powerful non-Western cultural experience and acquaint them with South Africa’s history, culture, geography and education system.
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| Story quilt panel focusing on life in Lesotho. This panel was created from photos taken on previous journeys to South Africa so Skidmore students and staff participating could become familiar with technique before embarking on the development of the four new story quilts. |
The Skidmore delegation began its journey with a two-week stay at the Edendale Primary School, near Pretoria, where the students not only joined teachers in their classrooms but became fully immersed in the life of the school, which has an on-site orphanage for children, many with parents who have died of HIV/AIDS.
As in 2007, the Skidmore delegation also brought quilts—170 in all—for children they would meet along the way. And they brought sewing machines, fabric, thread, and rotary cutters, and worked with students in all grades at the Edendale School on four full-size quilts that will be displayed in local museums in the spring of 2010.
In the following, Brackett describes how quilting has become such an integral part of the program.
Q: When did the idea of making quilts for South African children come to you?
In Lesotho in 2005. As we entered Lesotho, we met three brothers who were walking through the mountainside on a dirt road. All were barefoot and dressed in what we would consider to be summer clothing, even though it was winter and we found it cold. The two older brothers were wrapped in blankets but the youngest was not. At one point, the brother who had no blanket said he was cold and asked to use one, but his brothers refused to share.
As a result of this experience, our students and the professional team started to brainstorm ways they could make a difference in these children’s lives. One of their ideas was to make quilts for children in Edendale’s foster care program for children orphaned by AIDS or living in abuse situations. That’s when I met Patti Estabrook, owner of Patti’s Quilting and Fabric Shop in Glens Falls, and we began to plan our first project.
During the 2007 education study program, 17 Skidmore students, six professional staff and staff members at Patti’s shop created 70 quilts for children. Most were made with African and American fabric and several had lively patterns for children.
Q: How has this aspect of the program grown?
For the 2009 journey, we set a goal to make 140 quilts to keep children warm—twice the number we brought in 2007. We reached 170. Such community groups as the Association of American University Women contributed significantly, as did individual quilters across the local community.
The students and professional team usually start the process at least one year in advance of the journey, and sessions are scheduled for many Wednesdays and Saturdays.
Some students this year brought family and friends with them to help. One became so taken with quilting that—as a part of her curriculum requirements—she developed a story quilt with her sixth grade class in South Africa.
Q: Who is now involved in this?
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| Psychology major Wendy Rodriguez ’11 works on a quilt panel based on curriculum implemented at the Edendale Primary School. It will be a city landscape. |
Q: Tell us more about the story quilt project.
The story quilt project is new this year and has sparked lots of interest. For the 2009 study program we decided to explore story quilting as an appealing visual way of communicating what we learned at Edendale from our work with the children, museum visits and our travel through South Africa incorporating the culture, people and history of South Africa. We were inspired by the work of Faith Ringgold, who’s known for her painted story quilts combining painting, quilted fabric and storytelling; Ruth McDowell, who’s known for her art quilts; Martha Beauchamp, owner of the Quilted Jardin; and Kris Gregson Moss, a local fabric artist. These pieces will pay tribute to the country’s culture, history and people through multifaceted fabric and design. Click here to read more about the story quilt project.
Q: How would you describe the impact of your program in Africa? What new initiatives are you developing?
When I first traveled to South Africa in 1996, I met Delilah Britz, a teacher at Edendale, at a conference in South Africa. As we began to plan for future collaboration, we set a goal to continue the rippling effect, as she did in her life in the classroom as a teacher to make a difference in one child’s life, then observing and supporting the rippling of that occurs over time. We then decided that this program we were thinking about would do the same thing as we expanded and it has certainly met the criteria we set early on. Delilah passed away a few years later, but the excitement for the joint programming has stayed alive and we have reached out to many new individuals, groups, and organizations in South Africa. Each time we plan for the next journey, we always try to touch the hearts of others we have not met before to keep the rippling effect in motion.
In our last wrap-up seminar in Capetown, our students shared how they would like to see efforts in Kliptown, an informal settlement in Soweto, expanded for the journey in 2011. A community leader Thulani has been inspiring many in his township. We recently left quilts for children in the preschool but there were many families with needs so great and a quilt to keep a child or family warm would have been so appreciated. A new library just opened in a small camper and the severe need for books is evident.
Upon our return to the United States, four quilts from a local quilter were in a chair in my office for the next journey. Our new initiative will focus on Kliptown and what we can do to support Thulani’s work. Giving our students an experience like the South Africa Study Program will impact on their lives forever, as they begin to realize how fortunate they are and that they are needed to make a difference in the world. ~Interview conducted by Dan Forbush, executive director, Office of Communications
Tags: karen brackett, education studies department, south african journey, story quilt project
