UPDATE March 2025

On Wednesday March 5, 2025, the Indian Residential School Memorial (IRSM) request for proposals (RFP) was released to four design teams selected from a request for pre-qualification (RFPQ). The RFP provides guidelines and procurement rules on what each design team needs to consider, and include, in their conceptual design for the future permanent memorial. The RFP also outlines the competition brief, budget and theme for the memorial as the design teams will create their conceptual designs based on the What We Heard report from the project’s Phase 1 community engagements.

The IRSM is an important project that advances The City of Calgary’s commitment to Truth and Reconciliation, specifically Call to Action #82, establish monument to commemorate all Indian Residential School Survivors, lost children, and inter-generational trauma survivors. 

Work to date and next steps

Phase 1: community engagement (complete)

• Engaged those most impacted by Residential School

• Engaged Calgarians at-large

• Project deliverable: IRSM What We Heard report

Phase 2: two-stage Royal Architectural Institute Canada (RAIC) endorsed design competition

• IRSM request for pre-qualifications (RFPQ) design competition stage 1: (complete)

• Design competition stage 2; RFP released to the four pre-qualified teams from Phase 1: current stage, March 5, 2025

• RFP submission deadline for design concepts: April 22, 2025

• ISRM design public exhibition & engagement (details below): May 5 to May 16th, 2025

• ISRM design competition winner announced: June 20, 2025

Public exhibition and engagement

From May 5 to 16, The City of Calgary’s Indigenous Relations Office (IRO) will conduct community engagement sessions on the four conceptual designs submitted from the March 2025 RFP. Engagements will be held where Calgarians and other interested parties can view the conceptual designs via in-person events, online (IRSM Engage page) and in presentations to partner agencies. Engagement sessions will be held at The Confluence Historic Site and Parkland and at various Indigenous agencies and post-secondaries.

The City’s Engage Resource Unit will support the project leads by theming the information into a Phase 2 What We Heard report which will be made publicly on this page once the conceptual design is announced. This report will then be provided to the jury while they are evaluating the designs, so community input and feedback is considered.

Archived September 2024 Update

UPDATE September 2024:As part of our commitment to the advancement of Truth and Reconciliation, and in response to Call to Action #82 as highlighted in the White Goose Flying Report, we continue to work towards establishing a permanent memorial to commemorate all Indian residential school, day school and inter-generational trauma survivors and the children who never returned home. To achieve this, we are pursuing a two-stage procurement process, a design competition, to select a qualified team who will design the future Indian Residential School Memorial.

We are pleased to announce that the first stage of IRSM Design Competition, the Request for Pre-Qualification (RFPQ), is now open and accepting applications.

We invite architects, landscape architects, professional artists, and other related design professionals, either as individuals or teams, to compete in a Request for Pre-qualification (RFPQ) to be shortlisted.

To be considered for pre-qualification applicants need to review the RFPQ through our SAP Ariba public postingand submit an application before November 5, 2024.

It is imperative that this project be Indigenous-led, and for this reason we’re searching for a lead designer who has verifiable Indian, Inuit or Métis status and lived experiences of the Indian Residential School system: as survivors, day-school survivors, inter-generational survivors, or 60’s scoop survivors or in general, Indigenous, Inuit or Métis Peoples in Canada. If the future design concept includes architecture or landscape architecture, it is an asset if other members of the design team are also Indigenous.

Responses to the RFPQ will be reviewed by an evaluation committee and overseen by The City’s Professional Advisor to select up to five (5) shortlisted design teams. Once design teams are shortlisted, we will launch stage 2 of the procurement process, the design competition itself.

UPDATE May 2024: We are excited to announce that we have moved to the next phase of the Indian Residential School Memorial Project.

Through the remainder of 2024, The City will be pursuing a two-stage design competition to secure a qualified Indigenous lead designer for the Indian Residential School Memorial. Individuals or design teams are welcome to apply; this includes professional Indigenous artists. This work builds on the extensive public engagement that took place in fall 2022, where we received hundreds of contributions from IRS survivors, descendants, families, and community members on the location and design of the memorial. The feedback from this engagement is available in a What We Heard Report, and was shared with Council and the community in May 2023.

The first step of this work was the formal announcement of this upcoming design competition through a Notice of Proposed Procurement, which outlines what assets and qualifications the future lead designer will need to be successful.

The next steps will involve two stages: 1) a Request for Pre-Qualification (RFPQ) to shortlist eligible design teams that demonstrate Indigenous leadership, experience, and capacity, and; 2) a Request for Proposals (RFP) to invite the shortlisted teams to submit their design concepts for the memorial.

The design concepts will be evaluated by a jury of Indigenous and non-Indigenous experts and will include a community engagement component. The winning design will be announced and construction will begin thereafter.

Through Partnership with The Confluence Historic Site & Parkland (formerly Fort Calgary), which was secured in September 2023, the future memorial will be located near the confluence of the Bow and Elbow Rivers, a historically significant site for Indigenous Peoples of this area.

The relationship with the Indigenous community will lead the design and location of the IRS memorial with a strong Indigenous perspective. The City of Calgary wants to ensure that the engagement process is inclusive and collaborative.

Express your thoughts and feelings on a preferred location and design of the memorial by responding to the questions in the tabs for Location, Design and the temporary Memorial.

to make arrangements.