Tía Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore’s 17th Annual Celebrating Words Festival!

 

All are invited to Tía Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore’s 17th annual Celebrating Words Festival on May 21. The Festival provides an accessible, brave, and dynamic space that encourages creativity and supports intellectual growth and healing, in the vital and unique way that arts and literacy can. This event is family-friendly and for all ages. All programming and parking details are available on Tía Chucha’s Website.

Thank You to the Sponsors for Supporting the

Vision of the Celebrating Words Festival:

Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs

Los Angeles Educational Partnership

First 5 LA

Valley Presbyterian Hospital

Pacoima Neighborhood Council

Vaughn Next Century Learning Center 

WE RISE

About Tía Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore

The Northeast San Fernando Valley has a population of about 500,000 – the size of the city of Oakland – yet it had no bookstores, art galleries, or full-fledged cultural spaces until Tía Chucha's opened its doors in 2001. Thankfully, various local organizations have for decades provided services to address the many survival needs of a large number of economically insecure families and individuals in this area. Believing that it is also everyone’s right to explore and develop their innate creative gifts, Tía Chucha’s founders set out to correct the historic absence of life-enhancing artistic and literary options for this sector of the population. Melding vision with conviction, Tía Chucha’s was created as a space to embrace the equally important artistic development of our lives as human beings.

Tía Chucha’s began as a café, bookstore and cultural space owned and run by Los Angeles Poet Laureate Luis J. Rodriguez, his wife Trini, and their brother-in-law Enrique Sanchez. In 2003 Luis, along with singer/musicologist Angelica Loa Perez and Xicano Rap artist Victor Mendoza established a next-door sister nonprofit to incorporate a full range of arts workshops. When in 2007 the cultural café and bookstore disbanded as an LLC, it donated its assets, including inventory, shelves, equipment, and more to the nonprofit to carry its mission forward.

Tía Chucha’s cultural center now provides year-round on-site and off-site free or low-cost arts and literacy bilingual intergenerational programming in mural painting, music, dance, writing, visual arts, healing arts sessions (such as reiki healing) and healing/talking circles. Workshops and activities also include Mexica ("Aztec") dance, indigenous cosmology/philosophy, and two weekly open mic nights (one in Spanish, the other in English). It also hosts author readings, film screenings, and art exhibits as well.