Series of workshops in print techniques and photography involving the Latino community in Urbana-Champaign area. The project is sponsored by the Urbana Arts Grant and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. Aug. 2016- Apr. 2017
MIGRANT EDUCATION PROGRAM 2017-2018-2019
Educational support program designed to provide teaching to migrant children of farm worker parents during the summer in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois.
Teaching Program through Art for Migrant Children. The program is supported with a grant by the Illinois State Board of Education and sponsored by Parkland Community College and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Objectives of the Visual Arts Program
• To provide an approach to artistic training during the summer of 2017 in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois to migrant children and youth and offer them a quality educational opportunity and a space for creation that allows them to value their lifestyle.
• To allow children and youth to express their feelings by telling their stories and experiences in their constant change of address due to the farm work their parents do and how to discover through art how these stories can be recreated and imagined.
• To promote the idea of identity, creativity, collaborative work and community, these being fundamental premises for the artistic expression of each of the children and youth during the project.
• Guide students, and at the same time propose and complement their creative abilities, imaginations and ideas, so that they enjoy and discover their expressive abilities and new ways of being and interacting through art.
Workshop Dynamics
The topics or sessions of each workshop will be based on the exchange of opinions and experiences through storytelling and conversation, to then express the ideas in the form of creative artistic compositions.
A variety of materials will be available and the technical possibilities will be very open and will be determined by the needs of each work group, due to the diversity of ages and cultural characteristics.
Project Sample: Calendar
The most representative works will be selected to make a twelve-month calendar, representing a story that reveals the life process around the harvest or agricultural work carried out by the parents of migrant children.
The calendar will be the vehicle to show the reality of the experiences of migrant children to society.
The calendar will be designed when the artistic workshop sessions are being finalized, and will include the most representative works made by the project participants.
The printing and publication of the calendar will be done with the support of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) of the University of Illinois, who will also support the entire process during the workshop sessions together with Parkland College, who are the creators of the Migrant Education Program.
https://vimeo.com/187539338?
Long-Term Exhibition
The Public Mural Project stretches beyond the experience of teaching how to draw, paint or create a series of murals by Dr. Preston Williams and Leal Elementary School’s communities members. The project engaged these schools in a collective artistic creation providing a space and time to strengthen human relationships. It also was able to integrate not only the community of these schools but, most importantly, the surrounding larger community through an integrated social activity.
We wholeheartedly believe that building integrated communities that reflect new social realities provide spaces for dialogues about cultural belonging and community building. Through the development of this project, I also think that I helped to integrate the arts within the City of Urbana, creating a sense of place to promote art and culture. Additionally, the project helped foster the emergence of new artists who strive to preserve their cultural traditions and represent diversity and equal opportunities throughout collaboration.
The Latino community based project Invisible Faces: Identity Portraits began on September 2014 with a shared idea of community engagement and participation, providing at the same time a document that witnessed the integration of the Latino community into the social and cultural history of this region.
The project was a turning point in our artistic and pedagogical practices, demanding from us and from the participants a lot of extra time and effort be- yond family environment, and establishing a righteous routine that would go on to become an essential part of our life.
Our personal stories about coming to the U.S are bound by a common thread—our experience of being from Latin America. As artists, we saw the dis- connection and felt the need to preserve our cultures, our language, to not forget our roots. By doing so we were trying to dynamically articulate the experiences of migrant communities into Iowa’s cultural life. We found Iowa to be a quiet and unique location closely connected to the agricultural economy and the prac- tices associated with such a force, which is also a fea- ture that identifies Latino way of life.
Starting in October 2014 and continuing for eight months, the project focused on participatory workshops intended to build technical skills, critical thinking, collaboration and co-production. Through creating collaborative venues for means of expression, the project helped to revitalize the public role of art as a site of community building. In November of the same year the first workshop was held at St. Patrick Church of Iowa City, then at Public Space One, and St. Joseph Catholic Church of West Liberty in the latter part of the project. Though the locations were a bit clandestine at times the enthusiasm and joy created in these spaces was always palpable.
Photography and printmaking have a long his- tory of engaging with and supporting social and po- litical struggle in Latin America. Using this same tool augmented by other visual mediums, the project has reflected on the vibrant, but at times difficult, Latino life experience in the U.S. Time after time we saw and heard how projects and basic services are truly need- ed and valued amongst a community that is too of- ten marginalized. We set out to make connections and pass along our skills and ideas of art to our Latino com- munity, but the results after every workshop and exhi- bition were beyond our expectations. At the end, the resulted artworks were a model and a method of social integration through artistic endeavors.
In June and July 2015 the work created in the multimedia workshops was showcased at local galler- ies. The public exhibition of the resulting artworks pro- moted cross-cultural experiences in eastern Iowa and more strongly inserted the Latino experience into pub- lic consciousness.
Patricia León
Fidencio Martínez
Gonzalo Pinilla
Artists & Project Organizers
