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Westchester Arc
Herbert Katzenberg Center
121 Westmoreland Avenue
White Plains, NY 10606
(914) 949-9300
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Self-Advocates Design Quilt for New Building

Self-advocates and selected staff listed ways in which people with disabilities influence other people.

Self-advocates are collaborating with Dr. Beth Mount, an international authority on person-centered planning, to create a quilt that symbolizes their contributions to the community. “We’re going to tell a story together that has never been told,” Dr. Mount explained at the start of a day-long brainstorming session. “And we’ll do it in a way that will change the world.”

This undertaking builds on an earlier project in which Westchester Arc’s residential staff worked with Dr. Mount to create an Everyday Heroes quilt. That artwork, now hanging in the lobby of the Katzenberg Center in White Plains, depicts the ways in which one-to-one relationships that focus on individuals’ aspirations can change lives.

Participants translate the morning's discussion into collages, which will be the basis of quilted squares comprising the wall hanging.

When Dr. Mount learned that self-advocates had requested that the agency’s new resource center, under construction in Hawthorne, New York, incorporate water into its design (there will be a dramatic “water wall” visible from the lobby), she began probing the significance of water as a symbol. The project will explore how water imagery can be seen to symbolize the gifts that people with developmental disabilities bring to the greater community.

“What does water make you think of?” she asked.

The associations cited by self-advocates were many and sometimes startling. “Drinking water.” “Purity.” “Peace.” “Condensation.”

More than one participant waxed poetic. Said Vance J., “I think of a new heaven and a new earth, where no one will be rude, nasty or fighting. They will be polite. There will be peace in the world.” At which point, Dr. Mount pointed out that floods have been used throughout world literature to symbolize the washing away of things we no longer need and the potential for a new world.

“How do you contribute?” she continued.

“I vote.” “I’m kind.” “I have a job.” “I help others read.”

“And how do you know when you’ve made a difference?” Dr. Mount persisted.

“When people smile,” said one participant.

Turbulent storms, a new world order, connecting riverways. Water is rich in symbolism.

After a morning of idea-sharing, attendees constructed collages in which water symbolized the benefits of inclusion to the greater community. There were rivers, ponds, storms, dams, boats and rainbows. Now Dr. Mount will transform these images into quilting squares that will comprise a dramatic wall hanging for the agency’s new Gateway to the Community.

“When people don’t understand about the gifts you can bring,” observed Dr. Mount, “they can treat you badly.”

Concluded self-advocate Carolyn Holodak, “This is a good think tank.”

Artists, poets, philosophers and staff assistants at the day's end.