2006 marked the fifteenth year of the Medicine Wheel vigil installation to mark World AIDS Day at the Boston Center for the Arts.

Each year Medicine wheel is rooted in one of the four elements: earth, air, fire, and water. 2007 is a water year. As our young people begin to bear the weight of this pandemic we are inviting them to be water bearers and to carry 20,000 gallons of water to the cyclorama on International World AIDS day. Each bucket will represent a young life affected by this disease and will be born by a youth who carries awareness and hope that we can join together to transform our world. Youth will process with the buckets into the Boston Center for the Arts Cyclorama, carrying each bucket filled with water in which a candle will be floating. The impact of the disease on the lives of these youth will be dramatized as each candle goes out, representing the absence of the light of that young life. This will be a powerful way to engage young people who may not come to AIDS education in more traditional ways.

Public art works as a social force, transforming the lives of those who participate in its creation. Over 5000 youth took part in the “Join Hands With Us”, a public art and dialogue project that culminated in The Wall of Hands, a stunning visual representation of the impact of AIDS/HIV on the lives of youth. Youth groups from around the state were sent kits with AIDS/HIV fact-sheets, suggestions from our young people on dialoguing with teens about the disease, materials to cut-out red hand prints and a hand bound book in which the youth wrote their thoughts, reflections and concerns about AIDS/HIV. Those handprints became the Wall of Hands installation at the Boston Center for the Arts. The reflections on AIDS/HIV gathered from these youth around the state into the hand-bound books created an epic poem that captures the youth experience of growing up in the age of AIDS. On November 30th, Medicine Wheel Youth hosted a forum on youth and AIDS to open the Medicine Wheel as a place of public dialogue in art. In the wake of this resounding success, we have started a new project to involve 20,000 youth in the building of Medicine Wheel 2007. The rate of HIV infections among the young Americans is alarming: half of new infections in the United States each year occur in people aged 13-25. This translates into 20,000 infections.

Michael Dowling
March 2007
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