Organization

MACLA/Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana is an inclusive contemporary arts space grounded in the Chicano/Latino experience that incubates new visual, literary and performance art in order to engage people in civic dialogue and community transformation.

Founded in 1989 as the result of a broad community mobilization in the City of San Jose and nationwide on behalf of multicultural arts, MACLA has promoted, since its inception, a vision of arts programming as a vehicle for civic dialogue and social equity. A hybrid urban arts space located in downtown San Jose and rooted in the Chicano/Latino experience, it intersects many communities, cultures, and aesthetic approaches. From this genesis in advocacy and activism, MACLA has evolved into a community-based arts organization identified in 2003 by Cultural Initiatives Silicon Valley as Santa Clara County’s “most practiced and mature site of cultural-citizenship-building through participatory arts.”

More than 30,000 children, youth, young adults, families and community residents participate in the fifty programs MACLA produces each year in four core program tracts.  These are Visual Arts, Performance and Literary Arts, Youth Arts Education, and Community Development Through the Arts. The cross-pollination of Latino and non-Latino audiences has been a distinctive feature of MACLA since its inception. The patrons, audiences, and participants are 70% Latino and 30% non-Latino. A large part of the programs are geared towards creating opportunities for interaction between traditional audiences and new art forms and emerging artists.