Each term, Carnegie Mellon
University’s El Circulo Juvenil de Cultura organizes 10-week workshops for
Spanish-speaking children in the Pittsburgh area to bring them together to
learn new skills while providing an outlet for expressing is Spanish. This
semester, El Círculo and Corito, the Latin American children’s choir, will be
collaborating to focus on carnivals from the Hispanic world. The children
participating in the workshop will put together their own “Hispanic Pittsburgh
Carnival” to showcase what they learned.
The children, ranging in age from 6-12, will learn from community members about
different carnivals in the Hispanic world, will create “vejigantes,” giant
papier mache carnival figures from Puerto Rico, and will have the opportunity
to perform some carnival-related songs and dances, short skits, and participate
collectively in the creation of their own carnival.
El Circulo Juvenil de Cultura is a Department of Modern Languages program that
uses art and technology to keep local Latino children speaking Spanish. The
program, which began in 2007, is co-directed by Mariana Achugar, Kenya Dworkin
and Felipe Gomez. Previous workshops have focused on multi-media and narration,
dancing, poetry, food, and greening the earth, among others. All of the
sessions and activities are done in Spanish.
