Sep 12, 2008 5:53 pm US/Pacific
Berkeley Community Center Gives Latinos A Voice
La Peña is a vibrant community cultural center with a national reputation and a global vision that promotes peace, social justice and cultural understanding through the arts, education and social action.
La pena literally means "meeting place." This tradition started in Latin America in the early sixties.
The mission of the peña is to provide good food, music and an overall aesthetic response to an institutional culture that did not provide the space for other creative forms to exist.
As a welcoming gathering place, La Peña provides opportunities for artists to share diverse cultural traditions, to create and perform their work, and to support and interface with diverse social movements.
Annually, La Peña presents more than 200 events with emerging and established artists; organizes an arts education program; produces new works by local artists, presents internationally and nationally renowned artists, and houses a Latin American café which complements the organization's mission.
La Peña Cultural Center was started by a multiracial group of Latin Americans and North Americans as a response to the military coup that overthrew the socialist government of Salvador Allende. La Peña incorporated on September 11, 1974, one year after the military coup.
To learn more, visit
http://lapena.org/
