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New SWA Team
SWA Team is committed to the Las Vegas community and the Route 91 Family to honor everyone impacted by the tragedy on October 1st, 2017.
The 1 October Committee started the Memorial project by creating a strong foundation for the process. The extensive audience research and surveying outlined the ambitions and goals for the Memorial within the broader community. To build on this feedback during the competition months, SWA Team focused its initial outreach efforts on gathering more in-depth, qualitative information. To do this, we hosted a series of virtual Listening Sessions: informal one-on-one conversations with family, friends, survivors, and interested Las Vegas residents. We consider the Listening Sessions to be a “pilot program”-- only the first phase of building a relationship that will sustain and guide the entire development effort of the project. Continue Reading Below...
Community Engagement Statement continued... We will focus on ensuring that public dialogue is accessible, productive, meaningful, and compassionate. Through inclusive engagement, we hope to create the foundation, “Guiding Design Principles”, to be used as a ready reference benchmark, not only with our competition entry but also during the project evolution through detailed design.
Informed by the takeaways from the Listening Sessions, the Team generated a Visual Survey. Reliance on an image, rather than a text prompt, allowed the participants of the survey to
creatively interpret the sensory qualities of the visual collages and guide the design team toward the preferred experience of the Memorial. SWA Team attended four events in Las Vegas for which the Visual Survey became a valuable dialogue generator, opening up conversations about the nature of color and light, architectural elements, and planting in the design. Inevitably, the inperson survey participants also shared their personal stories connected to the October 1 event, further helping the Team understand the various degrees to which everyone in the community has been affected.
At the onset of the project, SWA Team crafted a Website to invite stakeholders to share thoughts, ideas, and stories online via a virtual “idea wall”. The Visual Survey was also made available on the Website. We anticipate the Website to continue to be an important tool for reaching stakeholders locally, nationally, and abroad. Website visitors will notice messaging is made available in both English and Spanish, and we will continue to offer engagement opportunities in both languages.
As design gets underway and the work of developing interpretive content gains momentum, we will continue to reach out to families and friends who have lost a loved one, to interested
concertgoers, and to key groups like law enforcement and emergency responders. Everyone’s story is different, and so is their path toward healing. We have fully embraced the idea that reflecting the tremendous diversity of lived experiences and opinions will be an important goal for the Memorial. We have been and will continue to be committed to involving the community in an ongoing design conversation. Through careful listening, documentation, and thoughtful consideration, the design we craft from this process will ultimately provide a lasting and permanent place for all; to remember, honor, and continue to heal.
*It is important to note that in the event SWA Team is not selected to move forward, we will make available all recordings and transcripts of the Listening Sessions and Surveys to Clark County so that the respondents’ thoughts and ideas are not lost.
