---
title: Traci Slatton spent nine years making HEROIC and found that hope is a discipline you build 
description: Traci Slatton spent nine years filming HEROIC, the documentary on Sabin Howard's National WWI Memorial, on hope, legacy and building things that last.
author: Dr Marina Nani (Editor-in-Chief)
date: 2026-07-03T17:00:00.000Z
updated: 2026-07-03T17:04:59.209Z
canonical: https://thequantumoflight.com/article/traci-slatton-spent-nine-years-making-heroic-and-found-that-hope-is-a-discipline-you-build
image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/heroic-traci-l-slatton-heads (1).jpg
categories: Debut Authors
content_type: News
publication: The Quantum of Light
access: members
schema_type: Article
---

The lights came up at Olympia London on the evening of 24 June, and for a moment nobody in the room moved. Then the audience rose. The film that had just ended, HEROIC, records the nine-year making of the largest bronze relief in the Western hemisphere, the sculptural heart of America's National WWI Memorial in Washington. The sculptor is Sabin Howard. The person who spent those same nine years with a camera, and who stood at the front of the room afterwards to answer for what the audience had felt, is Traci L. Slatton.

Most coverage of HEROIC puts Howard at the centre, and there is good reason for that. The memorial is 58.5 feet of bronze, 38 figures, 25 tons, delivered on deadline against a decade of federal bureaucracy and a pandemic. Slatton is usually given a single line, director and filmmaker, sometimes the sculptor's wife. She is all of those. She is also the reason the story exists in a form anyone outside the studio can see.

## The woman running the studio

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