PCA&M and the Latino Community Center Residency
During multiple Artist Residency Projects implemented since March 2018, PCA&M Teaching Artist/Visual Artist Alison Zapata and Teaching Artist/Performing Artist Geña Nieves have been creating with children enrolled in the Latino Community Center’s SOY (Supporting Our Youth) Pittsburgh program.
The primary goals of these residency projects have been to help Latino students in K-5th grade develop knowledge and understanding of their native countries, in addition to pride in their heritage, through visual arts experiences that integrate topics from students’ grade level curricula and/or general English Language Arts to help increase literacy and learning.
In March-May 2018, Ms. Zapata and Ms. Nieves collaborated in our first LCC SOY Artist Residency Project at Pittsburgh Beechwood PreK-5. Former PCA&M Youth Media Coordinator Molly Duerig created a video to share our 2018 Arts in Education Story.
While participating in this residency, the LCC SOY students were also featured in the Google - Year in Search 2018 that aired on NBC during the New Years Eve countdown and has had over 115 million views to date.
Ms. Zapata’s and Ms. Nieves’s collaboration with LCC SOY students at Pittsburgh Beechwood K-5 continued in January-March 2019, and from October 2019 through March 2020, Ms. Zapata returned to Beechwood and worked with the LCC SOY students to create a vibrantly colorful 4’ X 16’ mural in which they used art elements such as design, shapes, patterns, and colors inspired by murals created by the Royal Chicano Air Force in Sacramento, CA in the late ‘70s.
During Summer 2020, in response to Covid-19, Ms. Zapata implemented a synchronous online residency with the LCC SOY students. High quality Out-of-School Time (OST) programming is critical in helping to prevent “summer slide.” Participants worked/learned/created in their homes with materials provided by LCC, using folk art images as a means to explore Latin American countries including Guatemala, El Salvador, Argentina, Honduras, Peru, Mexico, and Chile. Each week students were able to view a short video about one of the various countries, learned about its art traditions, and created their own works of art. Projects included: Argentine guitar, Mexican Nichos, Peruvian Llamas, Guatemalan Worry Dolls, El Salvadorian Birds, Honduras Our Lady of Guadalupe, Chilean Landscapes, and more.
These Artist Residency Projects were supported in part by the Arts in Education Partnership of the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. The Arts in Education Partner serving Allegheny, Beaver, Greene, and Washington counties is Pittsburgh Center for Arts and Media.