Three years ago, Mitch Nivalis was facilitating a photography workshop with a group of 12 sexual abuse survivors in Ballarat.
“We explored this really simple concept that wherever there is a shadow, we can turn 180 degrees and there has to be light,” Nivalis said. “It was empowering to realise that whatever was going on in our brain, we could do a 180 turn in our mind and find something positive to cling to.”
Nivalis’s creative workshop was one of many conducted as part of the City of Ballarat’s Continuous Voices project – a $1.5m initiative that began in 2016 to recognise the pain and trauma caused by all forms of sexual violence.
“I’d always been interested in how photography had helped me process things and so I thought this was a great opportunity to apply what I knew to a cause I believed in, and to help people move through what they’d been through,” they said.
“I wanted the participants to know what it’s like to step into that room as a creative person, not a traumatised person.”
The project is set to culminate in a permanent memorial located in Ballarat’s Victoria Park. Informed by the creative workshops and community consultations of the past few years, the memorial will act as a space of remembrance, reflection and healing.
The City of Ballarat is now working in collaboration with abuse survivors and advocates to conduct a two-stage competition to select the memorial’s designer.
Ballarat’s Blake Curran has been a driving force behind the memorial development. He said it is an important step in recognising the trauma sexual abuse had inflicted on the city.
“This memorial will not only be a space to remember victims of abuse that are no longer with us but also a place to recognise the lasting impact that abuse of this nature has on the wider community … one that acknowledges that the issue of abuse is much larger than a single story,” he said. “It is an issue that we need to continue bringing light to.”
Ballarat has an unfortunate distinction of being a hotspot of historic child sexual abuse, particularly by Australia’s Catholic clergy.
A royal commission hearing in 2015 was told up to 14 priests in Ballarat had sexually abused children. There have been at least 130 claims and substantiated complaints since 1980. Survivor groups estimate more than 50 suicides in the town are linked to historic sexual abuse.
David Fitzsimmons, the chair of the design expert panel and the City of Melbourne’s Creative Urban Places program lead, said there was already a broad and well-informed foundation for the memorial based on years of engagement, listening and reflection. The space will not only recognise the gravity of individual experience but also foster a sense of collective love and hope.
“The selection of a prominent and peaceful site in Victoria Park provides for the creation of a place of national significance, offering sanctuary and solace for all those affected,” he said.
The memorial is set to be completed by 2026. State and local governments have committed funds to the project. A further $500,000 is still required.
The project has already had a lasting impact on survivors, Nivalis said, with workshop participants forging lifelong bonds.
“I think this memorial will be a validation for people to be able to be recognised and have a sense of the broader community acknowledging that this did happen and had a profound effect, not just on their lives, but on the lives of their loved ones too.
“This is an ongoing trauma, and having a space to publicly recognise this is so important for healing.”
