Latinx Leadership Academy in the Performing Arts (LLAPA)
Empowering Latinx high school students
Latinx Leadership Academy in the Performing Arts (LLAPA) is an inaugural initiative to empower Latinx high school students. As a Hispanic-serving institution, ASU is dedicated to Latinx student success. This initiative supports that mission by increasing representation of Latinx students and removing the barriers they experience in accessing the arts. Programming and initiatives target underserved schools, utilize culturally sustaining pedagogies and foster positive narratives to combat pervasive, negative and harmful mythology about studying in the performing arts.
The mission of the LLAPA is threefold:
- To provide resources for college scholarship attainment.
- To positively recast the perception of careers in the performing arts and champion our community's positive narratives.
- To create clearer pathways for academic and professional success in the performing arts.
This interdisciplinary academy addresses improved access to resources and further realizes the artists’ role in the relationship between cultural investment, economic development and social impact.
Facing barriers
Latinx students who want to enter the performing arts face many barriers. At ASU, we have seen the number of Latinx students grow in other areas of study while staying the same in music, dance, and theater. This challenging situation has been aggravated by lower high school budgets, fewer performance opportunities and less college preparation. The audition process is necessary to ascertain skills, scholarships and performance opportunities. Due to a lack of resources and information on the audition process, many students choose not to pursue their passion and instead give in to glass-ceiling ideology. Local schools may not identify and create paths for Latinx students to pursue the arts. Latinx students also face systemic and institutional bias against the performing arts. Latinx students wanting to enter the performing arts may lack peer support from family or counselors who can encourage them to apply and help them overcome perceived obstacles. Under these circumstances, Latinx students interested in music, theater and dance are unable to thrive and develop.
The need for support
We seek to provide resources and support so Latinx students build the confidence to attain their goals for futures in music, theater and dance. With Latinx mentors in the performing arts, students can better understand what choosing the major entails, the kind of jobs available in the fields, the preparation needed for auditions, and the time and resources needed to realistically pursue their goals.
Addressing the problem
Our collaboration brings together education scholars, practitioners and Barret Honors Fellows who will pursue three pathways to address the problem:
- LLAPA will help students identify resources, including scholarships, to help them study in the performing arts.
- LLAPA will empower Latinx students so they may positively recast the perception of careers in the performing arts and champion the Latinx community’s positive narratives.
- LLAPA will create clearer pathways for academic and professional success in the performing arts.
LLAPA will help create the artists of the future and the artists who reflect the rich cultural heritage of our Hispanic communities. Ultimately by feeding the field, LLAPA will address the systemic invisibility of Latinx actors in the industry and develop innovative and culturally-conscious pathways and pedagogies that lead to career success.
For more information contact: Professor Micha Espinosa.
Project lead
School of Music, Dance and Theatre Professor Micha Espinosa has used her personal history and extensive knowledge as a Chicana theatre artist and actor as a springboard to examine and contextualize the experience of Latinos/as/xs in theater. Her creative and academic writings linking actor training politics, pedagogy, identity development and ethics, have led to Professor Espinosa’s appointment as affiliate faculty with the School of Transborder Studies and The Sydney Poitier New American Film School at Arizona State University.