Today, Tes talks with Ginger Leopoldo. Ginger is an educator, actor, director, and community organizer. She is a proud founding member of Pintig Cultural Group and the founding Artistic Director of the Center for Immigrant Resources and Community Arts (CIRCA). Her work includes performing, directing, producing, and facilitating theatre productions and workshops of all ages. Ginger has helped to create a youth heritage curriculum with techniques that utilize a basic integrated theatre arts workshop methodology, as well as a facilitator of Activism & Art workshops for college students. She received her B.A. and M.A. in theater from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Ginger has collaborated with other theatre organizations around Chicago such as Old World Theatre Company and A-Squared Theatre Workshop. With over 20 years of experience as an educator and literacy coach for public school teachers through a nonprofit that engages at-risk youth with arts-based literacy programs, she has also been the Program Director for America’s Children’s Museum on Wheels: StoryBus, delivering an interactive hands-on literacy experience for young learners throughout Chicago. Most recently she has taught ESL to students in China and is an adjunct lecturer with the ESL program at the University of the Potomac. In 2020, she led CIRCA Pintig to adjust to global virtual events and productions for the community. She is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in organizational and educational leadership.
To learn more about Ginger Leopoldo:
IG: gingerenergy
The Center for Immigrant Resources and Community Arts – Pintig, or CIRCA-Pintig (CP) for short, is a 30-year Chicago-based organization whose mission is to engage community members in addressing critical needs of immigrant communities in creative, participatory, and empowering ways. As its name underscores, CP’s mission is two-pronged. The Immigrant Resources (IR) focus is on providing much-needed resources and services as well as access to these through grassroots activities and campaigns primarily for, from, and by immigrant communities. The Community Arts (CA) focus is on developing, nurturing, and popularizing community arts aesthetic and pedagogy that speaks of the immigrant experience within the changing multicultural American landscape as well as celebrating the histories and artistic legacies of America’s diverse cultural terrain through participatory art creation. Pintig is a Filipino term for “heartbeat” or “pulse”. CP’s almost three-decade practice and tradition were borne out of and honed through Pintig’s active cultural work since 1991. CP’s work may be summed up in three foundational principles – educate-organize-mobilize (E-O-M).
Vision: We believe in the power of the arts for engaging community members in building and nurturing thriving communities that are fully empowered to determine their collective destinies. Our vision of a just and humane society rests upon our core belief that our communities can play a significant role and can contribute meaningfully towards upholding human rights for all and uplifting the human ideals that value life, freedom, justice and nurture individual human potentials to the fullest.
Mission: In the light of our vision, we will educate, mobilize, and organize community members, primarily immigrants and their families, through community arts-based and community-centered intergenerational programs and services.
Website: www.circapintig.org
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/circapintigtheatre
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnFfHeOUDlePtzh9Yb8p98Q
Intagram: @circapintigtheatre
Twitter circa_pintig