Show Us Your Masks!
Like many people across the globe, Vermonters have stepped up and started making homemade face masks—both in response to a call for us to wear them while out in public, and to help address the shortage of basic protective equipment for doctors, nurses, EMTs and other essential workers. Practical, and often whimsical and fun, these masks are one more way people adapt traditional skills to address contemporary—and in this case pressing—needs.
Listening in Place is about maintaining and growing our connections to one another throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and period of recovery. How are masks about connections? By creating safety gear for loved ones and acquaintances—as well as for critical workers they will likely never meet—makers use their skills (and talents!) to support public health efforts, and reach out to others to bridge the distances between us. Furthermore, by sharing pictures of their masks on social media, people create additional small but significant connections between themselves and others.
Mask designs are drawn from an ever-growing array of sources, with the final results limited only by imagination and shaped by the makers’ skills. We compliment each other's work, debate which features and fabrics matter in a mask, which don’t, how they should fit, who should wear them, and whether or not they’re of any practical use at all. And—ask anybody who wears glasses—we learn from each other how to fit them to suit our individual needs. This lively cultural dialogue and the masks themselves impart insight into who we are right now, what matters to us, how we can help, and what we are doing to make sense of it all.
With our Show Us Your Masks! project we’ll help make this dialogue visual as well.
Send US your photos!
Vermonters: Show Us Your Masks! Machine sewn or hand sewn, or no-sew, store bought and decorated or made with your own hands. We want to see what you’ve been doing to help your friends, family and neighbors stay safe during this unprecedented time. Post or email your photos, we’ll share them as widely as possible, and preserve these examples of your work in our Archive for posterity.
Email photos to: listening@vermontfolklifecenter.org, post them to the Vermont Folklife Center Facebook page or tag us at @vermontfolklife on Instagram and Twitter.
You can also submit them using our photo uploader:
