Memory and Public Space: An Educator UnConference
How do we use public space to remember? Questions about memory and public space, history, politics, and art have become particularly vital in recent years. Oregon museums and cultural organizations are collaborating to support educators across disciplines and grade levels by hosting a series of online programs and curating a resource guide on how to integrate these questions and ideas into your teaching in the coming school year. Sessions are free for all attendees, and will be offered both synchronously and asynchronously during the month of August.
RESOURCE GUIDE
Schedule of Live Online and In-Person Events
Five Oaks Museum presents:
Remembering the 2016 Forest Grove High School Walkouts and Latinx Student Activism with Israel Pastrana
Monday, August 9 from 12 – 1 p.m.
Online Session; RSVP here
On May 19, 2016, over 600 students staged a walkout at Forest Grove High School in response to racially-charged incidents on campus. By lunch time, thousands of students from across Oregon had walked out in support of #StandUpFG, the hashtag used by Latinx youth activists to represent their movement. In this session, Israel Pastrana, 2021 history and culture guest curator at Five Oaks Museum and PCC Ethnic Studies professor, will share about the upcoming museo ambulante (walking museum) and how to connect with Latinx youth activism in the classroom.
Vanport Mosaic and partners present:
HISTORY IS NOW
Saturday, August 21 from 10:30 a.m. – 12 p.m.
Tour begins at 235 Northwest Park Avenue, Portland
In-Person Event; Register Here
Take a memory-activism walk on the North Park Blocks, and immerse yourself in Oregon’s silenced histories, as told by underrepresented and historically marginalized communities. Vanport Mosaic, in collaboration with Design as Protest collective and a number of groups, individuals, and cultural institutions, is activating a series of vacant storefront windows with history displays that celebrate communities’ strength and inspire us to join in solidarity and action. Tour facilitated by Allan Lazo of the Fair Housing Council of Oregon. View more information on this exhibition.
Converge 45 presents:
Prototypes
Opening Wednesday, August 26 at 6pm and on view through October 9
1010 Northwest Flanders Street, Portland
In-Person Event; No registration required
Prototypes is a physical container for the discussions, debates, reflections, and questions posed by Converge 45’s Portland’s Monuments & Memorials Project (PMMP), which for the past eight months has brought people together to consider the conditions and impacts of public monuments, including those that have been removed and those that should be built. The exhibition highlights Oregon artists engaged in the national reckoning over our markers of history that compound racial injustice and social inequity and asks, What is an appropriate monument or memorial for this time and place? What monument or memorial would you want in your neighborhood?
CANCELED
Portland Parks Foundation presents:
Paseo
To keep our artists, vendors, and communities safe, we will not convene a large public gathering on the South Park Blocks on August 27 and 28. But please stay tuned as we work with this extraordinary array of talent and mutual aid groups to reinvent Paseo.
Portland Chinatown Museum presents:
Asian American Photographers on Memory and Place
Tuesday, August 31 at 12:00 – 1:30 pm
Online Session; Register here
As Chinatowns in the United States dwindle and face erasure, the work of Asian American photographers have always helped protect traditional and unconventional monuments of our cultural heritage. Sometimes their work serves as a powerful reminder of what we have lost and other times their photography actually saves what might have been erased. A panel of photographers will present their work and offer personal descriptions to show the complex roles of memory and monument in their art. Maurice Berger once wrote that Dean Wong’s photographs “remind us that despite the stubborn, stereotypical view of Chinatowns as places of vibrant exoticism, they continue to serve an important social function as gateways and homes to new immigrants, as guardians of art, history and heritage, and as refuge from discrimination.
The Educator Unconference represents the collaboration of many organizations including the Center for Geography Education in Oregon, Converge 45, Five Oaks Museum, High Desert Museum, Japanese American Museum of Oregon, Museum of Natural and Cultural History, Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education, Oregon Historical Society, Oregon Humanities, Portland Art Museum, Portland Chinatown Museum, Portland Parks Foundation, City Club of Eugene, and Vanport Mosaic.
