Paseo 

pa·se·o (pä-sāˈō): noun, origin Spanish. A leisurely evening stroll to enjoy the awakened city

In 2023, Portland Parks Foundation presented the third year of Paseo, a free, family-friendly festival of art, music, learning, and healing on the South Park Blocks at Shemanski Square. The festival took place across three “Sunday Fun-days,” 3-6 pm, July 16, 23, and 30.

Conceived in 2021 and shaped by a committee of social justice and arts leaders, Paseo is downtown’s only entirely BIPOC-produced and -curated annual festival. Inspired by the ritual of an evening walk, Paseo last year brought over 4,000 people to the city’s oldest parks.

Learn more about this year’s artists and vendors here.

Be sure to follow Paseo on Facebook and Instagram, as well as on the official Paseo website.

Thank you to our event production partner Vide En Color, to our dedicated Paseo steering committee members, and to all of our event sponsors so far!

Presented by:

How Paseo Got Started

The vision for Paseo was created in 2021 with these themes:

Image courtesy Celeste Noche

  • A series of evening “walks” to bring our oldest parks to life

  • A community gathering to heal our downtown by honoring and celebrating our collective creativity, mutual aid, and resiliency

  • Great food, artisan markets, music, performance, and art

  • PPF’s gift to the city in honor of our 20th Anniversary

The first Paseo took place in August 2021, but because of COVID, it didn’t happen quite the way we’d originally envisioned. To keep our artists, vendors, and communities safe from the pandemic, we couldn’t host a large public gathering.

However, the artists wanted to perform. The mutual aid groups still deserved our help. We still wanted to celebrate 20 years of helping people help parks, so we created and shared a video showcase of 21 extraordinary, culturally diverse Portland artists and the Paseo Mutual Aid Challenge!

Watch the artists and learn about the aid groups who helped make the very first Paseo happen.