On Sept. 17, the Wellness Center launched their Unity Project as a part of Gather and Grow Week. The week was dedicated to promoting social connection among the UCCS community.
The Unity Project visualizes student connection and celebrates student’s unique identities. Chrissy Bailey, the Assistant Director for Wellness Promotion, described the project as “an illustration of how each of us as individuals are very different, yet we all have things in common.”
Participants were given a string and instructed to wrap their string around poles that had labels they identify with. Bailey describes the result as a “beautiful web, which is an illustration of our UCCS community; how we’re all individuals, but we intersect and connect and cross over and together, we create something even more beautiful than we do as individuals.”
Christian, a first-year social work student, described his experience with the project. “I did the transgender one, I did the LGBT+ community, did the chronic illness one because I suffer from chronic mental illness,” he said. “I did the dog person and introvert because I like dogs over people.”
When asked what drew him to the exhibit, Christian answered, “I was actually in the Wellness Center and my nurse recommended it to me.”
The project ended on Sept. 19 and the Wellness Center hopes the project will stay intact for as long as possible.