It was on long walks around her Kitchener neighbourhood last year that Brenda Reid came up with the idea of a community-quilt project for people to share virus stories.
The Waterloo architecture master’s candidate, who was researching the topic of care in architecture for her thesis when the pandemic struck in March 2020, created the From Behind the Mask initiative for people living in Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge.
“What caught my attention on my neighborhood walks were the ways people used space to communicate with each other — from sidewalk chalk to ribbons on trees to signs on lawns,” Reid says. “I wanted to capture individuals’ COVID experiences in a permanent way.”
Since launching from behind the mask in October 2020, Reid has distributed 1,500 quilt-block kits she assembled with the help of volunteers. To date, she has received over 400 completed designs on pieces of fabric resembling face masks with more expected before the April 30 deadline. [Full story]