The 3rd annual Wisconsin Conference on Latino Arts and Culture (WCLAC) will unite Latino artists and arts organizations from Madison and across the state. Once again hosted by Latinos Organizing for Understanding and Development (LOUD), the event will take place on Thursday and Friday, May 14 and 15, at the Centro Hispano on Madison’s South Side.
Oscar Mireles, the organizer of the conference and the founder of LOUD, tells Madison365 that the two-day event promises to be “an enriching experience focused on the critical role of the arts in our communities amidst today’s challenges” and that this will be an opportunity for the Latino community, Latino artists and the larger community to come together.
“I think probably the key thing is that this is just a great chance for us to come together. If something is going to save us, it’s the arts. It’s the poets and writers and artists,” Mireles says. “This conference is important so that we can bring people together to help them in their careers. Right now, this is probably the hardest time to be a writer or artist, but I think it’s actually the best time because there’s a lot of inspiration to draw from. There are a lot of people still doing the things they need to do to make this a better place.
“Last year, there were a lot of people at the conference who came up to me and said that they really just needed this to focus on what’s real,” he adds.
LOUD is a statewide initiative started by Mireles to advance Latino arts and service organizations, artists, and communities.
The first annual Wisconsin Conference on Latino Arts and Culture was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The second one, last year, was held at Centro, a hub for Dane County’s Latinx community founded in 1983.
“The first one was actually going to be in person, but then COVID resurfaced. And so we decided to go virtual at the last minute… in the last couple of weeks,” Mireles remembers. “And then the last event we held at Centro was great for a lot of reasons. We love the location and Centro is such a key part of the community, and their new facility is just perfect.
“So, for this third event, we plan to build on things. We have a lot of great co-sponsors, and their support is critical to buy into it early in terms of supporting the conference,” Mireles continues. “So it’s been a long time building, and for LOUD, it’s about how do we bring people together? I think bringing people together is what’s going to solve a lot of our challenges. We’re not going to be in a position to do it alone. It’s that ability to come together and see our common interests versus seeing all of the things that we don’t agree upon.”
(Photo: Destination Madison)
Renowned local musicians will perform at the annual Wisconsin Conference on Latino Arts and Culture, including Sergio Nute (guitarist), Eric de Los Santos (marimba), Cumbia Cachaca (traditional Colombian music) and Dinorah Marquez, director of the Latino Arts Strings Program of the United Community Center/Centro de la Comunidad Unida in Milwaukee.
“I’m looking forward to speaking about the mariachi music ensembles we have created with neighborhood Latino middle school students in Milwaukee,” Marquez says in a press release announcing the event. “Their participation has not only developed their musical talent, but connected them with the music from their homeland in Latin America, while also learning the connection with classical symphony orchestrations.”
UW-Oshkosh Professor Juan Garcia Oyervides will detail the preparation for the Quincenera exhibition currently showing at the Oshkosh Historical Museum
“This is an excellent opportunity to articulate our collective positioning facing the broad spectrum of challenges that we are facing today,” said Oyervides. “In particular, this conference will allow us the means through which we can reflect on the role of the arts in our local communities.”
For those interested in attending the Wisconsin Conference on Latino Arts & Culture, registration is now open at the following link. Registration is open until Monday, April 27.
“First and foremost, the Wisconsin Conference on Latino Arts and Culture is for our Latino artists. But it is also for organizations that are doing Latino programming, some of the larger institutions in this city,” Mireles says. “And then it’s also a great opportunity for arts appreciators and supporters, because they can get a front row seat to what’s going on now.”
