Parks hold more than your favorite tree, reading bench, or basketball court. Parks hold memory. They are often the site of public art, sculptures, and monuments. Parks and green spaces are our shared living rooms. Whose pictures do we hang on their walls? What gets remembered? We are inviting parks advocates, volunteers, and creative community organizers to join us for an examination of Peninsula Park’s recent placemaking projects and explore ways to honor community-led history work.
Peninsula Park
Peninsula Park houses Portland's first rose garden, and a historic community center which has become a hub of community growth and experimentation, stewarded by members of the Friends of Peninsula Park Rose Garden (FPPRG). FPPRG’s vision is to preserve, protect, and enhance this world-class public garden of great beauty and rich historical legacy.
Touring community-led history project
For the first half of our field day, join FPPRG members Mark Smallwood and Pat Frobes and local environmental historian Dave Hedberg for a tour of Peninsula Park’s community spaces and peek behind FPPRG’s ongoing sign project. Learn more about the project’s process — from community-engaged art projects to collaborations with students and historians— and discuss what it means to honor the complex history of public spaces.
Crafting collective memory
After the tour and discussion, participants will explore how stories can be remembered through a creative expression activity led by Julie Hammond. During this hands-on session, we will practice collaborative creative interventions to inspire new understanding of our public parks. Participants will explore public history and collective memory through personal stories, leading to practical and poetic interventions.
Register for Green Dreams Field Day: Peninsula Park
About this event
This is Portland Parks Foundation’s first event of our 2025 Green Dreams series entitled "On the Nature of Monuments" and is presented in partnership with the City of Portland's Portland Monuments Project. Together we seek to understand Portlanders' opinions on how we should approach monuments and memory-making in our city. Survey support offered by the PSU Regional Research Institute.
This event is free and open to the public, however registration is requested for supply planning purposes. Light refreshments will be served. Peninsula Park is located at 700 N Rosa Parks Way, and is accessible at all entrances, with a mix of paved concrete, gravel and brick paths throughout. Ramps are available at the rose garden and at the community center entrances. The park is along bus lines 4 and 44.