VISTA volunteers, Beth Dorgay and Eraina Nossa recruited a team of 30 Shawnee National Forest and University of Illinois Extension staff and community volunteers to work with elementary school children in Cairo, IL on a project combining education with environmental stewardship. Like other small and underserved communities, Cairo is struggling to keep art and music in the classroom. Cairo is characterized by declining population, high unemployment, with approximately one third of the population living in poverty.
Encouraged by VISTA sponsor UofI Extension Director Jody Johnson, Beth and Eraina contacted the school and volunteered to work with the students on this innovative project returning art to the classroom. Using fabric all 116 students would create a work of art related to the Civil War heritage of Cairo – a unique, one-of-a-kind patchwork-picture quilt. After a Civil War living-history lesson from Dred Scott, Phyllis Wheatley, Harriet Jacobs, Harriet Tubman and Harriet Beecher Stowe, each grade was assigned a theme from a southern Illinois history curriculum called “This Special Place.” Each class would make one quilt block artistically reflecting their lesson. Topics included the Underground Railroad, free people of color, the ironclad USS Cairo, the American flag and the Mound City Veterans Cemetery, and included history and natural resources. For example, learning about the Underground Railroad entailed learning about food resources available to fugitive slaves and landscape features such as swamps and caves that would enable them to evade capture and remain free. Similar lessons were presented about free black communities, wild foods, land clearing and forest resources.
Beth and Eraina organized and supervised each step of this innovative project, meeting with the principal and teachers to select the curricula, organizing the volunteers and agency staff, and transporting the quilt between volunteer groups. Student’s lives were enhanced by using both art and local history to create a unique product. Through this project, they learned that their own community played a key role in a significant episode in our nation’s history, forming a connection to the larger story of the Civil War. Learning about forest and water resources and how they were used by people in the past connected the students to the natural world. Combining art, history and their local community had a significant impact on the students. As a result of this program, they appear to: • Have a better understanding of how Cairo was affected by the Ohio and Mississippi R.; • Have a better understanding of the “Underground Railroad;” • Have a better understanding of free black communities; and most importantly, • Students developed more pride and appreciation of their community and heritage. Cairo’s quilt is remarkable as it truly reflects of the experience that students and volunteers alike had in creating this beautiful and unique piece of community art, but each community has a story -- and plans include enlarging the project to include local Senior Americorps and more southern Illinois schools. A-Stitch-in-Time returned art to the classroom and created a stronger connection between the students and their community, and the natural world.