By Isabella Zarate
With each exhibit, the Museum of the Grand Prairie does their best to both inform the community as well as incorporate them.
The Museum’s most recent exhibition, “A History of Healing” explores infectious disease and the community of Champaign County’s response to fight each disease. Amidst the current pandemic, the Museum has noticed the importance of community through such difficult times and found it best to incorporate the voice of the people.
Thus, looking to tell some of the story through the eyes of the community, the Museum is working on a project called “Healing Hearts: Community Covid Collage.”
According to Katie Snyder, the Museum’s Program Specialist, “The Healing Hearts Community Collage is a collaborative effort, with submissions from people throughout our diverse community of Champaign County. The collage will speak to the experiences we have had both individually and collectively these past 2 + years.”
The public, members of Champaign County are asked to submit artifacts ranging anywhere from artwork, photos, lyrics, and even poems “that speak to the multiple pandemics occurring in our community and the world from March 2020 to the present. Responses can include: Covid 19 (sickness, grief, loss, isolation, fear for self and loved ones etc.), Systemic Racism and other injustices, Economic Crisis (loss of jobs, homes, food insecurity), Climate Change, Mental Health Challenges, Gun Violence, [and] Political Polarization.”
Submissions will be accepted from now until the end of July and either need to be on paper or forwarded as attachments to Katie Snyder at ksnyder@ccfpd.org.
Attachments must not be larger than 8×8 inches and only one submission per person will be used.
“We wanted to take a more direct approach for giving voice to community members,” Snyder shared.
“It has affected so many people in so many different ways. . .The only way we could think of to really give voice to the people of Champaign County was to do a collage.”
Once all of the artifacts have been collected, activist artist, Cindy Sampson, will pull all the pieces together into one big collage.
The collage will then be on display in September and will stay in the “A HIstory of Healing ” exhibit for the next two years. After that, the collage will become part of the permanent collection.
“In 50 years and 100 years historians and just citizens can go and just look at what people in the community said they were thinking about or just feeling during this really historic time,” Snyder said.
The submission form can be found here: https://forms.gle/QSsioDLH4cELH3peA or paper copies can be picked up at Museum of the Grand Prairie.
Submissions can be emailed as attachments to Katie Snyder at ksnyder@ccfpd.org, or they can be dropped off with a submission form at Museum of the Grand Prairie.
