Taller de Primavera/Spring Workshop

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.