Promoting Cultural Belonging through the Arts: Community Partner Snapshot of Latino Art Midwest

Kayla Vasilko just completed her Master’s degree in communication with a focus on semiotics and the impact of higher education on positive social change in the Purdue Graduate School and the PNW Department of Communication and Creative Arts. While earning her degree, she had the opportunity to complete a service-learning project to celebrate Spanish culture through the arts and work the community partner Latino Art Midwest. Latino Art Midwest works to promote understanding of the role of arts and creative expression among Midwestern Latina/o communities. Students can explore their site, “view the art, and interpret the unique qualities of Latina/o artistic expression in the Midwest to discover how the arts attest to all kinds of transnational experiences—from migration, to bi-national identities, to the social networks that Latina/o artists are a part of—that ultimately illuminate how aesthetic cultural production has played a role in forming strong and vibrant communities that make the Midwest global” (Latino Art Midwest, 2024). Research, reflection, university art loans, and other engagement with Latino Art Midwest create important opportunities to combat cultural discrimination and increase representation.