♪♪ A year ago we were in immense sadness with the first memorial.

So, a year later, we're still dealing with the folks who have had to say those goodbyes.

But now it's time to really remember our loved ones and to think about the lives we're going to lead in their honor.

Detroit is a city that is beloved to me.

So when folks from Detroit came to me and said, what can we do?

How can we use art to help heal Detroit?

It was an easy, easy yes.

The project invites participants to create beaded pouches that will be added to the Healing Wall.

The great thing about this huge installation is it's like a constellation where its beauty comes from all the different pouches that people have made without any guidance on on what to do except to make them.

I had been interested in cultural objects that connect across generations.

And I thought about amulets that I had studied from West African traditions.

They're little packets that either contain powerful medicines or sacred text.

Their purpose is to heal, protect and to give the wearer a sense of resilience.

And also they connect the wearers to their ancestors as well.

The first thing we did was to have Sonya Clark come to Detroit and do a teaching session with volunteers who all learned how to make the pouches themselves so they could guide others into how to make them, how to cut the fabric, help them thread needles.

And I stitch over the edge one time...

Participants write a message or intention on paper dedicated to their loved one.

Then sew the paper into the fabric and attach a bead.

We're asking people to make two beaded prayers.

The idea is that one of the beaded prayers that you make will be added to the collective project, and the other one will always be your tether to the project that you take home with you.

When you look at these different pouches everybody had a story and a reason, and each one of those represents a lost soul or lost time or lost dream.

I learned how to sew to do all this, but I use one of Graham's T-shirts or one of his flannel shirts that he wore all the time.

I really wanted to have an opportunity to do one for him I chose Benny Napoleon.

I wrote him a dear note to let him know how proud I was of him and to thank him for his service.

Being able to make these pouches and talk to people has been a healing space for me because losing several loved ones during this pandemic and not being able to be around your family and love on them in the way that she wish you could has been very hard for us.

You had people who might be from a suburb sitting next to someone who might be from a neighborhood downtown sharing those stories with each other.

I met people who had lost loved ones that they'd been married to for decades and decades.

Children who couldn't write down the message, but they could draw something.

And so even in that act of drawing something, that's something meaningful to them that then gets held in this package and then gets placed among the chorus of voices to express what it feels like to have been through this and to be going through the pandemic and all its repercussions.

The memorial was revealed at the TCF Center in downtown Detroit on August 31, 2021.

We needed a big wall.

We're going to have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of these pouches.

And that's why we chose to bring in the convention center as a partner because there's plenty of room and time for people to see it.

It's a tremendous honor to display the healing memorial.

We look forward to seeing this piece grow and expand, and we hope to see a large audience experience the power of this work.

One of the reasons the memorial last year and this memorial this year were so important is that it shows people how important the creative arts are that they are a part of everything that we do.

There were tears, sometimes tears, more than words and that kind of power, to know that you can.

You have a place to to catch one's tears right to hold space for those emotions.

That's that's the purpose of the project.

So it is their art making.

It is their voice that is being added to the chorus and it's their meaning that is being made through the manipulation of cloth and beads and thread and needle.