Discussions about National Memorial competition - take care of yourselves.

As you may be aware, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse recommended the establishment of a national memorial in Canberra in consultation with victims and survivors.

The Department of Social Services (department) is leading this work, and has partnered with the National Capital Authority (NCA) to conduct a national design competition to select a suitable design for the National Memorial.

The competition is open to all Australian design professionals (architects, landscape architects or engineers) who will then work with teams, which may include members of the general public and individuals with lived experience.

We recognise that this competition may be of interest to people with lived experience of institutional child sexual abuse, but it may also create traumatic memories for some people, following public communications about the opening and closing of the design competition, and the subsequent announcement of the selected design.

Please note, the audience for any advertising and public messaging is designers and architects and therefore will be primarily through targeted channels, but if you feel impacted by the announcement, please contact Wattle Place.

Further information regarding the National Memorial design competition will be available on the department’s National Memorial webpage when the competition goes live, including responses to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs).

The NCA is responsible for responding to all competition‑related enquiries. If you have any competition-related enquiries, please contact the NCA via email at RCMemorial@nca.gov.au. For all other queries, please contact the department at RCMemorial@dss.gov.au.