La Alianza Cultural works with the diverse Hispanic communities in Kingston, NY, to preserve their languages and cultures, while sharing and celebrating their traditions, arts and values amongst themselves and with the broader community.
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La Alianza is expanding its workshop offerings and activities to bring together Kingston’s diverse communities while fostering cross-cultural understandings.
After conducting an extensive survey of Kingston’s Latin American communities — immigrant men and women who now live and work in the city and contribute to its vitality — the committee saw in the findings how worried the respondents were about their children’s loss of their families’ original languages and cultures. Likewise, they expressed a strong desire to have important holidays reflecting their traditions and regions more widely recognized and celebrated. La Alianza is now addressing these findings.
La Alianza started a cultural program in 2021 to bring together Latin American groups and the broader community to foster cross-cultural understandings. In the program’s first year, we offered two cultural heritage workshops at two local nonprofit organizations. Both workshops — intergenerational, culturally and ethnically diverse, and running weekly for four weeks — were open to the public, free of charge, and conducted in English and Spanish. Participants expressed a great desire for more workshops like these.
All our programs respect everyone’s fundamental language rights, keeping participants’ mother tongues active and encouraging participants to work toward confidence in a second language.
Spring Celebrations.
Our workshops highlight aspects of the communities’ distinctive cultures, including folktales, songs, dance, cuisine and textile arts. Programs for children and teens focus on retaining and increasing pride in their cultures and languages.
Dancing Devils Mask Workshop.
