The Freedom Park Conservancy is thrilled to announce it has been awarded a $125,000 matching Park Pride Grant to support the “Find Your Way in Freedom Park” campaign. This transformative initiative will bring new and improved wayfinding signage, maps, and gateway markers to Atlanta’s largest linear park.
Stretching 130 acres and linking more than eight miles of multi-use paths across historic intown neighborhoods, Freedom Park serves as a critical green corridor – connecting communities, public art and two Nobel Peace centers. Yet, for many visitors, navigating the park can be a challenge.
The grant, awarded by the Atlanta-based nonprofit Park Pride, recognizes the Conservancy’s focus on improving accessibility, safety, and community engagement in this treasured public space.
“We are incredibly honored to receive this Park Pride Grant,” said Michael Ross, chair of the Freedom Park Conservancy. “This partnership allows us to accelerate our “Find Your Way Campaign,” so residents and visitors can easily navigate and discover all the park’s beauty, public art, and history.”
Specifically, the wayfinding signs will clearly identify Freedom Park and guide visitors to key destinations, including public art, green space, and connecting trails. The goal is to create a park experience that feels welcoming and easy to navigate. The success of the $250,000 campaign, an initial step of a broader campaign aimed at installing new directional signs and information hubs throughout the park, is
especially impressive considering it was launched just last October. Phase II of the campaign is aimed at raising an additional $200,000.
Ross said the campaign started with a fundamental question: Why Freedom Park?
The quest to answer essential questions about what makes Freedom Park unique, and worthy of donations, led to the development of four park pillars that would ultimately help define the Conservancy’s mission and path forward. The four pillars are based on distinct attributes, such as the park’s legacy, which recognizes the years-long civic activism by intown neighbors to stop multiple highways from cutting through Atlanta’s historic communities as well as highlighting the park’s unique identity as Atlanta’s only art park. Further, Freedom Park is the only park in the world that connects two Nobel Peace Centers, while also connecting several intown neighborhoods to the Beltline, Piedmont Park, Stone Mountain and downtown Atlanta.
The four pillars now serve as the foundation of the campaign, expressed through
these defining themes:
● Freedom is Your Nobel Peace Park
● Freedom is Your Art Park
● Freedom is Your Intown Greenway Park
● Freedom is Our Legacy Park
Ross, who has been active with Conservancy since early 2019, loves how the park came to be. “If it wasn’t for neighbors banding together and engaging in civic activism to stop several freeways, all of intown Atlanta would be dramatically different today. All of the neighborhoods around us that we all enjoy, would not be so nice as they are now,” he said. Also, as an art historian and a gardener, Ross stated, “it doesn’t get much better for me to have nature and art together.” He walks along the east end of the park almost every day with his Rottweiler, Grizwold.