Centenary projects - Roll of Honour soundscape

28 July 2014

The voices of primary school students will resonate through the Commemorative Area in one of the Australian War Memorial’s first centenary projects marking 100 years since the declaration of the First World War.

From 4 August 2014 until the end of 2018 the names of the soldiers engraved on the Roll of Honour will be heard throughout the First World War cloisters in the Commemorative Area.

This ambitious project will bring together recordings of each of the 62,000 names that appear on the First World War Roll of Honour panels.

In order to gather the first set of recordings the Memorial, in partnership with the ABC, invited primary schools from across Australia to lend their students’ voices to the project.

Each selected school travelled with a group of students to their closest participating ABC studio, where each student spoke the name and age of a soldier from the Roll of Honour panels.

The recordings will become part of the Memorial’s National Collection, a piece of history commemorating the centenary of the First World War.

With the development of a downloadable application there will be opportunities for all primary schools across the country to be involved in the Soundscape. The Memorial is working with Google and Grumpy Sailor to develop a recording application that will allow schools to participate remotely in the project. The application will launch later in the year.

The Memorial’s Commemorative Area contains the Roll of Honour, Pool of Reflection, and Hall of Memory. It is the heart of commemoration at the Memorial.