Artistic expression can aid in the healing process. And to that end, the 1 October Memorial Committee, formed in 2017, is encouraging the community to get creative and submit ideas to inspire a permanent memorial on the site of the October 1, 2017 Route 91 Harvest festival mass shooting.
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- Reflecting on five years of the Las Vegas Community Healing Garden
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The committee’s Call for Creative Expressions launched in July and will remain open through October 31. (To submit, visit bit.ly/3DT97Nx.) Submissions can be drawings, poems, songs, essays, short videos or any other form of artwork. At press time, there were 72 submissions.
“There’s kind of a music theme,” Committee Chairwoman Tennille Pereira says. “I’ve seen hearts. Some of the symbolism seems to repeat. I think a lot [of submissions] are positive things. The committee was worried about … what we were going to get. ‘Can some of it be gory or dark?’ And we’re not seeing that.”
The committee also launched a Call for Qualifications—also open through October 31—to build professional design teams, which will include professional artists and an architect licensed in Nevada. (To apply, visit bit.ly/3C7CCKs). Up to five teams will be selected to develop proposals for the memorial utilizing selected designs from the community.
These design teams will then be presented with the submissions and encouraged to utilize them to develop concepts for the memorial during the winter and spring months of 2023. The committee will make a formal design recommendation to the Clark County Commission by late summer.
According to Pereira, it remains difficult to say when the memorial will officially break ground. The 1 October Memorial Committee still needs to recommend how the memorial will be paid for, and what ongoing funding and programming will look like, depending on the final design.
As for the location, through a survey administered by the committee, the public made it clear it feels the memorial should be housed at the location of the Route 91 Harvest festival. Pereira said MGM Group has committed two acres from the venue sites to the memorial. But, she said, MGM Group will wait for the memorial to be finalized before officially signing it over.
“My ultimate goal is that healing will occur through the process, that we’ll have a world class beautiful memorial that Vegas can be proud of,” Pereira said. “But most importantly, that the impacted community feels heard.”
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