Give Me Shelter
Community storytelling and public installation project in colloboration with Gwen Hoeffgen, George McCarthy, Daniel Cox and Michael Patch
Portland, Oregon
2025
2025
Give Me Shelter is a community storytelling project examining lived experiences of “home” in Portland, Oregon amid an ongoing housing crisis. Co-facilitated and co-conceptualized with Gwen Hoeffgen, the project asks how public space might be reimagined to uphold dignity, care, and belonging—and how communities can collectively build a sense of home beyond private shelter.
The project emerged from research into vacancy and access in Portland’s downtown core. Through walking, mapping, and documenting vacant spaces, and inquiring into their availability and cost, the project identified the barriers that prevent community-centered use of existing infrastructure. In response, Give Me Shelter shifted its focus to public space as a site for collective presence and care.
The first iteration took place as an interactive public art installation and gathering in Peace Plaza, the site of Oregon’s first peace memorial, the Peace Chant sculpture—created to offer quiet reflection and advocate for peace. The installation functioned as a temporary monument: a fully furnished living room placed in a public park, signifying stability, care, and structure.
Shaped through community collaboration, the space was designed by participants with diverse and often conflicting relationships to home. By relocating the intimacy of a living room into a public plaza, the project challenged assumptions about who public space is for and how dignity can be practiced collectively.
The installation was accompanied by a public video presentation featuring photographs, audio, and video submissions responding to the question, “What does home mean to you?” gathered through an open call. The program also included public conversation and guest speakers, Street Roots Vendors and Poets George McCarthy and Daniel Cox, who shared poems and provided poetry books for sale. There was a shared “home cooking” culinary experience by former Columbia River Correctional Institution (CRCI) inmate Michael Patch. His recipes shared were developed by him while in Prison. He offered cheesecake and taught how to make taffy, both ingredients in his book “Patch’s Culinary Delights”. Additional video works were presented by Outside the Frame, with an interview conducted by Shawn Tillman, a writer and former CRCI inmate.
Together, these elements position Give Me Shelter as both a gathering space and a platform for listening—inviting participants and passersby to consider home not as a fixed location, but as something practiced collectively through presence and shared responsibility.