Educarte Incorporated

Despite the Greater Washington area having a significant Latino population, there are disproportionately few Latino arts programs, especially in our own Prince George’s County. Latino audiences lack opportunities to consume and participate in the arts that represent them, while artists in Latino genres fall behind in arts-related employment opportunities in both education and performance.

We envision a vibrant arts scene in Maryland and Greater Washington where we present: (1) popular and challenging artists performing for local audiences; and (2) interactive opportunities for learning and cultural exchange that will enrich the lives of our residents. Accordingly, our goal is to create safe, welcoming spaces for learning and practice, as well as the presentation of Latino arts to the members of those communities and also others who come from other cultural backgrounds.

We envision a performing arts and arts education landscape in which local and visiting performers and educators in Latin American traditions reflect the demographic makeup, aesthetic values, and cultural traditions of our local audiences, and where creatives feel free to explore these rich traditions to create new works and innovate their practices. Our guiding values are to elevate equity and diversity in the arts, pay artists fairly, build community through creativity, and respect all traditions equally. We approach our projects and community with a deep commitment to social justice, equity, inclusion, and equality.

There are no other Brazilian and Latin American music and dance-focused arts nonprofits like EducArte that both present artists and offer classes to children and adults in Maryland. Our story starts with our community feeling excluded from high-quality presentations and education programs. EducArte brings to the forefront important cultural contributions of local and visiting Latino artists. Despite its significant Latino population in Maryland and the DMV, programs of this type are unique in Prince George’s County. The art forms that are taught in our classes and demonstrated through our performances are community-based and audience-engaging traditions, in contrast to the audience/performance separation that is found in Western classical traditions. Our intention at EducArte is to create a safe space for the practice of music and dance performance where artists feel welcome, as well as to build community, connection, and creative outlet through cultural arts. Our audiences and participants have told us that they feel a sense of shared purpose and they enjoy learning about culture through our work.

Our approach to program curation and curriculum development is also unique because we believe that it is important to teach about the history of the traditions we are working with so that our practitioners understand the origins, heritage, struggles, and achievements of centuries-old Afro-Brazilian art forms that are still vibrant and alive today all over the world. In keeping with these traditions, we also work under the axiom that one cannot separate dance from music. The intention is to bring both together in practice sessions and performances.