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Jacobo Lovo

Through every event and workshop, Latino Arts serves as a critical community touchpoint, fueling learning and connection. Because we know the arts can overcome that which divides and bring those who make and experience them to places of common ground, one of our most valued partnerships is with school programs and educators who share our passion to educate and build greater empathy and equity in our communities.

Through our educational programming for school groups, we offer a variety of workshops and performances to help bring cultural arts and education to students in a unique, interactive, and accessible way.

Through hands-on workshops in visual art, cooking, and dance, students explore new skills, engage their creativity, and gain a deeper appreciation for diverse cultural traditions. At Latino Arts, we value partnering with artists and makers in the community to bring these workshops to life. Our friend, Alejandra Jiménez, founder and director of Ometochtli Mexican Folk Dance, has shared her extensive cultural and historical knowledge of Indigenous dance through our Aztec Dance workshop. Bands like Venezuelan llanera and bluegrass combo Larry & Joe performed interactive matinee concerts, inviting students into their storytelling as they learned and sang along with their songs. And in our gallery, artists like Christie Tirado have given tours to countless groups through her exhibitions, explaining process and cultural connections that fuel her art.

Every season offers a unique combination, inviting student groups to return year after year to discover something new about Hispanic heritage through the cultural arts.

We are proud to be a resource for educators throughout Southeastern Wisconsin and the Greater Milwaukee Area, providing mentorship and coaching as teachers gain greater competency and knowledge of Latin American cultural traditions, which enriches their classrooms. This increased knowledge and competency creates space for students of Hispanic descent to connect with their cultural roots and for non-Hispanic students to learn about their peersʼ heritage in a safe and constructive environment.

Educators in our community bring their students to Latino Arts year after year. We host students and patrons who tour our galleries, attend workshops, and enjoy performances. Reflecting on students’ experiences, comments in a recent teacher survey speak to our success:

We come from a rural district. Our students have not had much experience being fully immersed in Latino cultures or the Spanish language. Latino Arts gave students valuable experience hearing Colombian rhythms and voices, as well as learning about other world perspectives outside of our small pocket of the world.

Through the years, Latino Arts has earned high levels of connection and trust—both within the communities we serve and from the community at large. Driving this trust is our authentic desire to actively involve and engage all stakeholders, including a network of local artists, in creating and shaping our programming. Latino Arts strives to make offerings community-minded through collecting and implementing community feedback into every aspect of program planning. Through frequent communication, invitations, and requests for input and feedback, Latino Arts works hard to ensure that our community stakeholders and supporters feel recognized and heard. We utilize these voices to share and amplify our mission.

As an organization that is mission-driven and culturally rooted, we approach our work with a great sense of responsibility and respect for the community we serve by focusing on our programming through an educational lens. With this aim, the content of our programming is led by culture bearers to ensure an authentic, culturally rooted educational experience for all who visit us. Along with this comes a deep desire to continually improve our programming so that it remains responsive to our ever-growing, intergenerational community while supporting the preservation of cultural traditions.

Jacobo Lovo is the managing artistic director at Latino Arts, Inc. in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. info@latinoartsinc.org; latinoartsinc.org