Today we’d like to introduce you to Houston Alliance. They and their team shared their story with us below:
We are an artist advocacy group fostering leadership in Houston Latinx arts community. We’ve been working as volunteers to help uplift our fellow community members by exposing them to Houston’s artistic offerings. We meet quarterly to help shed a light on artists and arts activities by connecting, sharing, and cultivating partnerships.
The Houston Alliance for Latinx Arts (H.A.L.A.) is an artist/creatives-led advocacy group whose mission is: to engage with and foster leadership within Houston’s Latinx arts communities, actively share their talents and connect via professional development, promote artistic collaboration and advocate for policy changes in our City’s and County’s fiscal structure for equitable funding for Hispanic/Latino/a/x/Mexican-American artists and arts organizations commensurate with the Houston regional area’s 45% population of peoples from Spanish speaking descent.
HALA’s work focuses on presenting breaking news and important developments relevant to our field and caters to the Latinx experience as first-hand responders. We look to the needs of our stakeholders and attempt to fill that void: Translation/ interpretation (Spanish), answering questions about opportunities, and presenting the latest news pertinent to the Latinx arts community. In acting as a network hub for information, we can disseminate knowledge and present solutions, should they be needed.
In our development, HALA has realized that the missing link is development and connectivity. Already at a deficit, the Latinx creative community is impacted by the lack of funding, language barriers, and overall inability to compete at the same level as other, more privileged communities.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Since we are a small group of professional artists, art professionals, and most essential, volunteers, we struggle to find enough time to create ways to bring in funding to support the work we do. The work we do as professional artists is always undervalued and unconventional. Members of the HALA steering committee work in different capacities but always towards the end of supporting the work of Houston’s Latinx creatives.
Besides our general meetings, we created another way for sharing the word about Houston’s vast network of Latinx artists and creatives; that event is called “PLATIC-ARTE.” This quarterly event features brief presentations by 2-4 visual/performing/literary/or arts field professionals bookended by a Latinx culinary artist for a well-rounded experience.
This was made possible by the BANF (Bipoc Arts Network Fund), that was distributed in 2022. As a result of this grant, we have been able to pay these artists and offer this free program for the Latinx Arts community and general public. Our plan was to hold these events quarterly, and October 18 is the last one in 2023.
We are hoping to find ways to continue holding this artist-centric event in 2024. In the meantime, we plan on continuing volunteering and holding our General Assembly meetings to share, network, and evolve the Latinx arts community in Houston.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
In the Spring of 2018, the Houston Alliance of Latinx Arts manifested as a result of the publication of the NALAC Arts Equity survey. Our informal group continued holding monthly meetings and partnered with various Latinx allied arts institutions to move the conversation of inequity and deficit towards advancement and education of the emergent Latinx artist communities.
While the pandemic created a challenging situation, and many committee members dropped off due to financial challenges and/or time constraints, we originally had seven members. We have remained a volunteer action group. Staying on were Angel Quesada and Henry Sanchez, Emily Fraga-Chambers-Zech, and Angela Carranza, who joined in the summer of 2023.
Since 2018, HALA has conducted meetings and operated under a non-hierarchical structure of leadership, choosing to create a Steering Committee using consensus-based decisions via in-person polling from membership. Attendees of the initially monthly meetings have included creatives from a wide range of disciplines: visual, literary, culinary, and performing arts (theatre, music, spoken word), arts administrators, varied arts professionals, community leaders, and other allies that want to affect change.
We have met at various arts and non-profit spaces who are allied with the goals of the group: Arte Publico Press, MECA, TBH, HAA, Lawndale Arts Center, Garza Studios, to name a few. HALA is dedicated to keeping the Latinx arts community informed of news that impacts them and their future, and where possible creates situations where stakeholders can take part and create a difference that is possible.
Throughout the course of our meetings, HALA can take credit for the advancement of language equity in the Houston Arts Alliance granting process. We modeled how a bilingual grant workshop was reasonable and simply put, necessary. Our Steering Committee members have consistently advocated for artist-centric dialogues and a place for Latinx artists at the table for any policy decisions affecting the general arts community.
One of our central tenets has been fostering education for the new generation of Latinx artists and arts organizations about opportunities, processes, and management of arts funding in the greater Houston region. To this day we remain connected to artists, arts administrators, elected officials, and Latinx arts advocates throughout the city.
What do you like best about our city? What do you like least?
The fact that there is enough room for so many artists to follow their dreams and actually find work is heartening. The Latino/a/x community is connected, and the layers are deep. We are helping to build awareness of the Latinx arts community by holding meetings and events, connecting the multiple cultures of pan-latinindad!
What can be challenging about our great city is the distance and the traffic. At times, we are not only separated by cultures but also by space. We remain hopeful that we can be a force for connecting the dots and building bridges.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.halahtx.org/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/houstonalliancelatinxarts/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HoustonAllianceLatinxArts
Image Credits
Henry G Sanchez
Angel Quesada
