an aspec virtual community quilt project

thank you SO MUCH to everyone who contributed! we had exactly 200 squares submitted to this project, which is absolutely mind-blowing to me. i'm so thrilled to share this final project with you all!

download a high-res version of this image here

click here for links to each individual square

close ups of the squares under the cut!

I want to clarify that this wasn't a research experiment, but a community art project I led to apply theories I learned in a class. I didn't process or publish any data beyond what happened publicly on this blog. (I did create some slides about my experience running the project, and I'm happy to share them if anyone wants.) I don't say this to downplay my fault - you deserved to know that this was part of an assignment regardless of what the assignment was - but to help you understand how it happened and how my program is learning from it. I've since learned that this project was beyond the scope of what's typically supported through this class. I had no formal review process or team support, which is how this mistake went uncaught. after talking with my faculty, I know they're going to be much more cautious with future projects, and with informed consent specifically.

I know there's been some desire to participate in another quilt in the future, and I have desire for that too. but after reflecting, I have some reservations. one is that I have understandably broken trust with many of you. the other is that this mistake happened largely because I was running this alone, without anyone else checking my decisions. I don't think I can in good conscience run another project like this on my own.

my instinct is to leave this blog active to preserve the art and writing shared here, but to remove my involvement, keeping it indefinitely paused. this is a side blog, so unfortunately transferring ownership isn't an option. If you'd like your content to be removed from this blog, please dm me and I'll take it down. I also want this to be an open conversation, so if you have other ideas about what you want to happen to this blog/project, I'd really appreciate hearing them.

hi, thank you for sharing your feelings with me, I really appreciate it. I firstly want to sincerely apologize - you're right, I should have been upfront with the information that this project was related to a class. this message helped me realize that was a major oversight of mine. I'm truly sorry for betraying your trust.

to offer some more information, I took a graduate course last fall about community arts, and the final assignment was to design and carry out our own community art project. I chose to engage with the aspec community because I am aroace and I wanted to feel less alone, and I wanted to try and help others feel less alone. my care for this project and this community is completely genuine and based in personal experience - the class gave me the education to help me carry out a project that was deeply meaningful to me.

I should have given you the opportunity to consent or not consent with the full knowledge that I was working within a class. to be fully honest, I didn't realize how that omission might impact someone until you sent me this message - so thank you for helping me realize. if it brings any peace of mind, please know that I did not publish any quilt squares or the final quilt anywhere other than this blog. in my final presentation, I gave a short explanation of my experience with this project to a class of about 10 students.

hi!! thank you for your kind words about the project, I'm so happy it meant something to you :)

I've thought a lot about what I'd like to do with this blog now that the quilt is done. basically as soon as it was over, I knew I wanted to do it again haha. I am still in school right now (I actually did this project as part of an assignment for a community arts class), so right now I am trying to be really mindful of my time, not biting off more than I can chew etc. the last thing I'd want is to commit to organizing something else and not being able to follow through.

there are a few things I'm thinking about as far as what's next. I'm definitely open to organizing more quilts in the future, but that did require a lot of active involvement for the duration of the project on my end, so I don't imagine I could do that more than once or twice a year. I've also thought about using this blog as a platform to host more general creative aspec self-expression, not necessarily confined to the quilt-square format (music, video, short stories? idk! I want to see it all!)

I would like to establish some basic content moderation guidelines for future projects, just to have some clearer structure. for the aspec quilt, I left it really open and I was grateful that all the content that was submitted was inoffensive and relevant to the prompt. but if I open it up more indefinitely, I'd like to have some clear guidelines in place prohibiting racism, transphobia etc. I want to do this in a way that still allows for freedom of expression (I don't want people to feel like they can't express their experiences with racism, for instance). I also want to keep an open-door policy of not requiring any specific labels/identities, while still maintaining the blog's focus on aspec experiences.

— @pride-flag-planets

use the number/letter grid to find out more about any squares you're interested in by clicking on the links below! I highly recommend looking through; so many of these squares are accompanied by thoughtful messages with credits to wonderful creators :)

the first one is "gradient," the second one is "patchwork"

I've posted all the squares that have been submitted to me. If you submitted a square and I have not posted it, please message me asap - I am putting the quilt together as we speak.

"Free to fly, free to be, free to love"

this quilt square was shared by @nymsley!

about this project

this quilt square was shared by @i-sometimes-read-the-url!

about this project

this quilt square was shared anonymously!

about this project

“Never out of place”

this quilt square was shared anonymously!

about this project