Design competition for Thame youth memorial (Status: Press release)

A PLANNED Thame Youth Memorial has moved closer to becoming a reality this week, with the launch of a design competition for the Memorial itself.

Thame Town Council have completed work on the Memorial Gardens by installing new fencing, paving, benches and planting, and the efforts to raise funds for the installation of a permanent Memorial are now gathering pace.

The final form of the Memorial is open to ideas and suggestions from the local community and a design brief is now available to anyone, amateurs and professionals alike, who would like to submit a proposal. Without wishing to constrain imaginative ideas, it had to be recognised that the site is within a conservation area and that any construction must be in keeping with its surroundings and the two other memorials (War Memorial and Pearce Memorial) in the immediate vicinity, so minimum criteria have been laid down as a guide.

The design brief can be downloaded from the Trust’s web site at LINK HERE
and is also available in hard copy from Thame Town Hall. The competition is open until 28 March 2010 and then the designs submitted will be on display at Thame Town Hall and at Thame Museum, inviting further input from the community. The Memorial Trustees will finally select 4 – 6 designs and refer to professionals to work up into functional designs and costings.

The objective is that a Memorial should be in place by Summer 2011 but, in the meantime, the Gardens will be formally dedicated as a place of remembrance and reflection for those who died too young, The ‘Lost Youth of Thame’, at a ceremony on Sunday January 3, 2010.