About Bilingual Arte

Bilingual Arte creates opportunities for children, youth and adults to learn, and practice Spanish through creativity and personal expression. Multisession workshops, school year programs or private sessions that integrate visual and performing arts are designed for people to learn and practice the new language while engaging in the creative and playful process of art-making.

Bilingual Arte currently offers online student-centered courses, seven art workshops in English, Spanish, or bilingual for K-12 and adults, and two Spanish through Art programs for children ages 3 to 5 and 5 to 7. Schools, organizations, families, groups, or individuals interested in cultivating communicative and literacy skills in Spanish and English through different art forms such as visual arts, dance, and performance can also request and consult about customized workshops and programs.

Bilingual Arte is committed to antiracist education and practices. All Bilingual Arte programs are based on progressive pedagogies that promote and advocate for social justice, diversity, and inclusion.

About me

My name is Victoria Guzmán, and I created Bilingual Arte because thanks to my work as a visual and theatre teaching artist in an English speaking country, I had the opportunity to learn a second language through full immersion, art and creativity.

I see language learning as a door to cultural diversity, understanding and self-awareness. Learning a second language has, at the same time, challenged me and allowed me to see more deeply into myself and others. Through my work as an artist and educator, I want to contribute by fostering diverse bilingual and multilingual communities.

United States alone is a country where more than four hundred languages from all over the world are spoken and keep flourishing everyday. This makes bilingual and multilingual education a growing demand, as the majority of people in the world are nowadays able to to speak more than one language fluently. Through Bilingual Arte, I want to offer a space for kids to begin forming their bilingual and multilingual brains. I wish for youth and adults who only speak one language or who struggle to keep their skills in different languages to find creative, useful, and joyful ways to experience becoming fully bilingual.

Whenever I engage with people personally and professionally, I enjoy sharing my first language and culture, and being able to communicate in English, Spanish, or both! I have observed that besides the opportunities that learning a new language brings, students who engage in the process of language acquisition creatively, also begin to communicate more about themselves and to remember easily what has been understood. In the possibility of expressing ideas and feelings through art, music, or movement, students of a new language begin to explore complex forms of communication making abstract ideas, gestures, and nuances relevant. The findings of this exploration are what builds confidence to communicate with others. This is why, I firmly believe that when we learn and practice a new language through art, besides academic and artistic skills, we are also acquiring social and emotional strengths. This was the experience that gave me the idea of Bilingual Arte to continue my work with more significant intention. Bilingual Arte workshops, programs, and sessions aim at two purposes: The need or desire to learn and practice a new language, and the need to do it through the pleasure and commitment that creative processes awake.