The project comprises three key components.

First, we’ll partner with community spaces like council and school libraries to mount temporary physical displays, together with a digital counterpart on our website, contextualising the project with stories about our wartime heritage and encouraging greater involvement by community volunteers on subsequent stages of the project.

Meanwhile, a web designer will develop and implement a digital nominal roll of school alumni and associated family members who’ve served in Australia’s armed forces, with individual profile pages for each veteran listed. These will follow a standard template, enabling new online profiles to be added over time without requiring major technical skills by the volunteers working on the project.

Finally, remembrance will be made accessible and richer online through a trained team of volunteers confirming, through DVA records and other reference sources, key information about nominated service members (including their links to Kent Street SHS), before uploading relevant profile details to the nominal roll.

Our online memorial will be more than just a list of names. It will honour not only those who died but all who served — including the wounded and survivors. Sacrifices beyond the battlefield will also be recognised through providing the option of clearer linkages to the experiences of war widows and other family members of service veterans.

Unlike traditional memorials, the project will link veterans directly to our school community and thereby help support further social history and medical research.

With this aim in mind, each profile will also include an optional password-protected section for confidential information to be viewable only by approved academic researchers, balancing public access with privacy requirements.

This will then also enable valuable datasets to be created (by using our extensive electronic records of former students and staff) to support for example future medical research into veterans’ health needs and family dynamics during and after transition to civilian life.

Throughout everything, our message will remain simple — honour and support veterans and their families, and increase understanding across generations, by building bridges rather than walls.