LOISAIDA INC

1. To rebuild a community's sense of place and belonging through historical awareness and historical interpretation strategies.
2. To promote the inherent beauty and aesthetic value of everyday life.
3. To build bridges between diverse Puerto Rican and Latino iconic urban hubs.
4. To serve as an engine of discovery and as an incubator for self-sustaining creative ideas and ventures that share and enhance the dynamic spirit of our surrounding community.
5. To use the arts and aesthetic experiences as vehicles for the enhancement of a vibrant social and community life by creating a shared experience based on a stimulating habitat of interplay and fusion, reciprocity, participation, engagement.
6. To raise consciousness about environmental justice and promote environmental literacy, and how it relates to and affects the NYC Latino experience.
7. To build a democratic ethos and a democratic intention based on assets already existing within the community.

Our commitment to create a welcoming and receptive atmosphere where we value uniqueness without elitism. Promote a working-class DIY spirit and immigrant self-reliant ethos. Continue to a collaborative practice approach to social experience. Create an inter-generational and inter-ethnic dialogue around displacement prevention and emphasize the creative, re-creative and performative aspects of experience.

With our new multi-purpose space, the Loisaida Inc. center located in the historic Lower East Side of Manhattan, aims to become an incubator for self-sustainable artisanal technology, and culinary arts entrepreneurial initiatives.

In Fiscal Year 2022, Loisaida launched initiatives in climate literacy and environmental justice, boosted its independent media production capabilities, recorded music, film and delved in culinary arts while it continues to produce diverse original content for and by the community. We continue to expand community relations by providing free, affordable and low-cost accessible space and technical resources for many local emerging artists as well as students, teachers, researchers, cultural producers, entrepreneurs, small nonprofits and collectives, partners and residents. We continue to support and provide a platform for independent media production, hybrid live/virtual performances, collaborations, talks and presentations, streaming of local events, recording, music and film. Also, this year Loisaida, Inc. has conducted monthly homeless outreach campaigns and hosted over a dozen older adult health and wellness gatherings. We continue to provide remote arts programming, supporting neighboring nonprofits and diverse grassroots neighborhood revitalization activities.

This year we celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the Loisaida-Acacia affiliation as we continue to grow while still addressing real world issues with a socio-cultural perspective, inclusivity, service and resolve. Over the last ten years, Loisaida and Acacia have produced a unique blend of exhibitions, music, arts, theater, performance, workshops, panels, events and presentations that are culturally driven and socially adaptive, weaving possibility and hope into our future. Together with Acacia, we revamped and revitalized the historic Loisaida Festival, once at risk of becoming lost forever, it now continues to be the longest running and largest Puerto Rican led cultural heritage celebration in the neighborhood. This year, on its 35th anniversary, the Loisaida Festival took hold of Avenue C and more than 15,000 guests came back to our streets. Through a positive atmosphere of music, arts, food and entertainment, this family-oriented, multicultural weekend celebration continues to be one of the most significant the Lower East Side and New York City has ever seen.

On the ground, Loisaida has created the Loisaida Cultural Plan, which the local Community Board 3 adopted as policy in 2018. Two years later, in 2020, Loisaida developed the first multidisciplinary arts & wellness program specifically for Acacia Network Housing residents which in many ways solidifies Acacia’s unwavering support of Loisaida and our mission. The Arts & Wellness Program continues to expand, employing over a dozen teaching artists and servicing up to nineteen sites. During the height of the 2020 and 2021 global pandemic, Loisaida and Acacia stood out as leading Puerto Rican led organizations in both social services and cultural programming adapting services effectively, it strengthened our network infrastructure, made more resources available to our community and established our community media production cen