"La Opinión celebrates Mujeres Destacadas, an annual awards ceremony recognizing the many contributions Latinas have made in Los Angeles."

"[They] recognize 30 Latinas that have distinguished themselves through outstanding service in the fields of Health, Education, Leadership, Business & Technology and Arts & Culture." One of such honorees is one of Tia Chucha's Centro Cultural & Bookstore founders Maria Trinidad Rodriguez! Check out the clip:

Dear Friends, Colleagues, and Supporters of Tia Chucha's Centro Cultural,

Please save arts funding for the City of L.A.! The Los Angeles City Council is voting on an important motion, Wednesday, February 3, beginning at 10 AM, to consider the possible elimination of the sole revenue stream for the Department of Cultural Affairs--the one percent of the city's occupancy tax for hotels. As a grantee, Tia Chucha's Centro Cultural would lose funding dedicated to us for 2010 and 2011, including for our Music LA workshops and our annual "Celebrating Words" Literacy & Performing Arts Festival. This would adversely affect many arts organization and artists throughout the city, possibly killing most neighborhood arts projects. Please send a message to your L.A. City Councilperson that eliminating DCA's only dedicated funding source is wrong.

Thank you for your continued support. Now more than ever!

Sincerely,

Luis J. Rodriguez
Cofounder and President of the Board

Find your Los Angeles Councilmember @: http://www.lacity.org/YourGovernment/Cit yCouncil/index.htm

Also check out: PUT THE ARTS TO WORK! and speard the word!

Luis J. Rodriguez is one of the founders of Tia Chucha's Centro Cultural--a bookstore, arts/music/dance/theater/writing/healing workshop center, and performance space in the Northeast San Fernando Valley. Every Friday night is a free Open Mic. Every year we also sponsor a literacy & performing arts festival called "Celebrating Words: Written, Performed & Sung" at Mission Community College. We also have our own youth empowerment project called Young Warriors as well as a nationally-recognized small press, Tia Chucha Press, and a CD production company called Dos Manos. In addition, we have our own Azteca Danza group called Temachtia Quezalcoatl. Every summer, we also hold a benefit with bands, dance, poetry, comedy, and more at Hollywood's Ford Amphitheatre.This past year VISTA LA at ABC-TV in Los Angeles aired this clip about Luis and Tia Chucha's Centro Cultural:

see video footage!

A Call for Artists!

We are in search of the next artist(s) to be featured at Tia Chucha's mini gallery space. Photos of art may be submitted online at info@tiachucha.com with a follow up phone call to our Centro at 818.528.4511. You may contact us to make an appointment with a staff member to review your art pieces.

Tía Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore:
A Dream of Community Empowerment
by Luis J. Rodríguez and Trini Rodríguez

Tía Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore was created to fill an important need in the Northeast San Fernando Valley—where 450,000 people (about the same population as Oakland), mostly Mexicans and Central Americans, did not have access to bookstores, art galleries or decent cultural spaces until Tía Chucha’s opened its doors.

The Centro was named after Luis’ favorite aunt, who played guitar, wrote poetry and songs, sang, and even concocted her own perfumes and colognes (although they smelled pretty bad). Luis wanted to honor Tía Chucha’s spirit of being a self-engendered and self-realized person, of taking risks to meet her passions, gifts, and destiny. Over time, we discovered many Tías Chucha: The lady who sold tamales on weekends turned out to be a great singer; the older gentleman who walked in seemingly out of nowhere was a wonderful Mexican muralist, poet, and singer; and a mechanic, who never read a book in his life, in one year read thirty. The impact of Tía Chucha’s work in a community devoid of arts opportunities to enrich one’s soul and mind was constant. The most moving story involved a 14-year-old girl who wanted to commit suicide until she heard the drums of our resident Azteca Danza group—she joined, and a year later said she didn’t want to kill herself anymore.

Chicano author/poet Luis J. Rodríguez, community activist Trini Rodríguez, and community leader Enrique Sánchez, founded the Centro as Tía Chucha’s Café Cultural in 2001. Located in the working-class community of Sylmar, Tía Chucha’s consisted of a full coffee bar, bookstore, art gallery, performance space, and arts workshop center (art, music, theater, dance, and writing). Programming included theater and music presentations, poetry readings, Noches Bohemias (open mic for Spanish-language participants), Film Nights, Young Womyn’s Circle, Jóvenes Nobles (a young men’s rites of passage group) and Community Dialogues. In 2003, the importance of accessing a larger space in order to meet a growing need, motivated Luis, Angélica Loa and Víctor Mendoza to form Tía Chucha’s Centro Cultural as a nonprofit arts center—next door to the café/bookstore. Our board of directors represents all communities served: Chicanos, African Americans, European Americans, and Asians.

We brought all the arts and healing workshops into the new Centro, along with Tía Chucha Press, which recently celebrated twenty years of publishing quality cross-cultural poetry from around the country; Dos Manos Records, a CD production project; and Xispas, a Chicano online magazine. Tía Chucha’s incorporated new programs including Young Warriors—an arts-based youth empowerment project, Mexicayotl indigenous cosmology, mural painting, and Capoeira (Brazilian Martial Arts/Dance). In the spring of 2006, we began an annual literary & arts festival, “Celebrating Words: Written, Performed, and Sung;” and in 2007 we held our first annual benefit event at the 1,200-seat Ford Amphitheater in Hollywood called, “Tía Chucha’s Celebration of Community & Culture: Sí Se Puede!/Yes We Can!”

Tía Chucha’s presenting record includes such notables as Lalo Guerrero, the Godfather of Chicano Music; bands such as Quetzal, Very Be Careful, Los Cojolites, and Mezkla; original theater with Teatro Tres Chingazos, Teatro Chusma, and the EARTH Theater Company; and readings by Sandra Cisneros, Víctor Villaseñor, John Trudell, Yxta Maya Murray, Martín Espada, and Adrienne Rich, among others. Workshops include music (guitar, piano, Hip Hop DJing, African Drumming, Son Jarocho); art (painting, sculpture), and writing.

Over the years, Tía Chucha’s work has been acknowledged through grants from funding institutions including the National Endowment for the Arts, California Arts Council, LA County Arts Commission, LA City Department of Cultural Affairs, Liberty Hill Foundation, Center for Cultural Innovation, and The Annenberg Foundation. Individuals who support Tía Chucha’s work through donations include Bruce Springsteen, John Densmore of the Doors, Lou Adler, Richard Foos of Rhino Records, Tom Hayden, Jack Kornfield, and the Luis & Trini Rodríguez family.

In 2007, Tía Chucha’s was forced out of its space when the landlords tripled our rent to make way for a high-end Laundromat—temporarily moving to nearby Lake View Terrace to continue our programming until a larger space could be located. Answering the call to return to Sylmar, Tía Chucha’s just celebrated its relocation to Sylmar Plaza with a grand opening on March 28. Upcoming annual events are the Celebrating Words festival, slated for June 27 at Mission Community College; and Celebrating Community & Culture: Sí Se Puede/Yes We Can!, a benefit event on August 2 at Hollywood’s Ford Amphitheater.

Tía Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore will continue to make art, dance, music, writing, theater, indigenous cosmology, and literacy the centerpiece of an ongoing economic/cultural revival in the largely neglected Northeast Valley communities. Tía Chucha’s artistic and educational resources are a much-needed creative stimulus in the midst of these hard economic times. “In fact, it’s precisely in hard times that the arts become the engine for community renewal and regeneration—the only way through today’s chaos and uncertainties is with creativity,” asserts Luis Rodríguez, author of the best-selling memoir, Always Running: la Vida Loca, Gang Days in LA.

Cultural spaces and independent bookstores such as Tía Chucha’s are dying across the country. We have proven that they are badly needed and must be safeguarded from the vagaries of the marketplace, political shifts, and development. Tía Chucha’s Centro Cultural is a model of what self-sustaining and organically tied community cultural spaces can be. As our tagline says: Where Art and Minds Meet—For a Change!”

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Tía Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore receives funding from the California Arts
Council’s Creating Public Value Program, contributing to the organization’s work in
strengthening its community’s imaginative and creative capacity through arts and literacy programs—making books “cool” and relevant.

see source of article

Tia Chucha's will be closed SATURDAY June 27th for its participation at The 4th Annual Celebrating Words Festival at Mission Collegeand MONDAY June 29th from 12pm-5pm.

SUMMER INTERNSHIP

– APPLY NOW!

POSITION AVAILABLE AT TIA CHUCHA'S CENTRO CULTURAL –

2009 LOS ANGELES COUNTY ARTS SUMMER INTERNSHIP PROGRAM

ORGANIZATION DESCRIPTION

Tia Chucha's Centro Cultural is a nonprofit cultural/arts and learning center based in the Sylmar area. We provide arts workshops, events, and a culturally-focused independent bookstore in an effort to promote arts enrichment and literacy in the culturally neglected Northeast San Fernando Valley and beyond.

POSITION DESCRIPTION

Bookstore Sales Analyst Summer Internship

Tia Chucha's Centro Cultural is seeking a summer intern to assist our bookstore staff in improving our systems for business analysis and inventory management with the aim of bettering our alignment with the needs of our constituent community and strengthening this revenue stream to support our cultural arts programming.

SKILLS REQUIRED

Applicant should preferably be a Business, Inventory Management, Marketing or Finance major and should have completed sufficient coursework to be able to

successfully analyze sales and inventory reports, and calculate/interpret sales margins.

Prior retail experience is a plus. Applicant must be able to focus and complete tasks in a shared office environment with background music, customers, and workshops

being conducted. Strong English written and verbal communication skills are required; fluency in Spanish is strongly recommended Proficiency with the Microsoft Office applications (Word, Excel, etc.) are a must. Experience with QuickBooks point-of-sale or similar software is a plus. Applicant must be able to provide their own transportation to and from work. Also, the applicant must be able to work during our hours of operation (posted at www.tiachucha.com ). The ideal candidate has a strong interest in promoting literacy and the arts in an underserved area, and, of course, loves books!

HOW TO APPLY

Please email resume and cover letter, in Microsoft Word or text-only format, to info@tiachucha.com , with "ATTN: Trini - Summer 2009 Internship Application" as the subject. Questions? Contact Trini Rodriguez by email at info@tiachucha.com or call 818.528.4511 . www.tiachucha.com

Interested students are encouraged to visit the Los Angeles County Arts Commission website at http://www.lacountyarts.org/internship.html for their posted pages titled “2009 Intern Flyer” and “Eligibility Info”. Please review this important information before applying. It is your responsibility to understand the purpose of the program, as well as the responsibilities, eligibility and qualifications necessary for prospective interns.

SPRINGSTEEN TICKET AUCTION TO BENEFIT TIA CHUCHA'S CENTRO CULTURAL & BOOKSTORE

Tia Chucha's invites you to place a bid on tickets to see BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN AND THE E STREET BAND, performing live in concert at the Los Angeles Sports Arena 3939 South Figueroa Street , Los Angeles , CA 90037 on Wednesday, APRIL 15, 2009 at 7:30pm. This is a great opportunity to see an exciting show and support Tia Chucha's at the same time!

TICKETS: These tickets were donated to our organization by Bruce's management company, and we have been assured they are among the finest seats in the house. We have 4 tickets in total to auction off, and are entertaining bids for 2-ticket blocks. Starting bid for the auction is $1500 for a set of two tickets. Bidding closes at 12 noon (Pacific Time) on Monday, April 13th. Tickets will be picked up at the Artist Will Call window at the venue Box office from 6:30pm onwards, day of show.

SEATING OPTIONS: Auction winners have a choice as to whether their tickets are for seats in the LOGE section (first tier above the floor, within the first five rows, either to the left or the right of the stage) or for access to the Pit (general admission, standing room only area on the floor, directly in front of the stage. Pit passes are first come, first serve, and placement in the Pit is not guaranteed, so be sure to be in line early enough to ensure admission).

LOUNGE PASS : Each of our tickets include an E Street Lounge pass, which enables the ticket holder to go backstage to relax and have a drink (the Lounge has a cash bar) before the show. There is no backstage access after or during the show.

HOW TO BID FOR TICKETS:

NOTE: Bidding is restricted to residents of the Greater Los Angeles metropolitan area only.

Simply send an email to chuchastaff@gmail.com with the subject line "TC Springsteen Tickets Bid". In that email, include the following:

1. your full name
2. your residence mailing address
3. your email address
4. the best phone number to contact you
5. your bid amount for the set of 2 tickets (minimum bid is $1500)
6. names of ticket holders
7. seating preference (seats in the LOGE section, or standing room in the Pit).
8. your credit/debit card number & expiration date, (payment will be processed only if you are the winning bidder.)

The current high bid for each category will be posted on Tia Chucha's website.

The two highest bidders will be the winners. Your bid is not official until you receive a confirmation email from Tia Chucha's staff. You will also receive an email if someone outbid you. All bids are processed in the order received. Auction closes at 12 noon (Pacific Time) on Monday, April 13th; no bids received after that point will be accepted. 

Once your payment is successfully processed, Tia Chucha's will give the names and seating preferences to Bruce's management representative, and your tickets will be available at the venue Artist Will Call window from 6:30pm onwards, day of show. The concert will take place at the Los Angeles Sports Arena 3939 South Figueroa Street , Los Angeles , CA 90037 on Wednesday, APRIL 15, 2009 at 7:30pm.

Good luck, and thank you for supporting Tia Chucha's!!

For Immediate Release Media Contacts:

Arlene Mejorado or Luis Rodriguez

(818) 528-4511 or (818) 898-0013

Emails: info@tiachucha.com or luis@luisjrodriguez.com

Grand Opening of Tia Chucha's Centro Cultural at Sylmar Plaza

“Renewing Community through Arts and Culture”

With Honored Guests, Music, Dance, Poetry, and More

March 28, 2009 4 PM to 9 PM

at 13197-A Gladstone Ave. , Sylmar , CA 91342

LOS ANGELES (February 25, 2009)—Tia Chucha's Centro Cultural & Bookstore celebrates its relocation to the Sylmar Plaza with a Grand Opening themed “Renewing Community through Arts and Culture” on Saturday, March 28, 4 to 9pm with guests Latino/folk/experimental band La Santa Cecilia , experimental reggae rock band Fosforo , Hip Hop artist/MC Olmeca , female poets and singers Ahwomb Collective , spoken word artist/poet Funkahuatl with former Doors drummer John Densmore , resident Aztec dance group Temachtia Quetzalcoatl, Las Cafeteras joined by resident Son Jarocho students, resident Guitar students, and Nahuatlaka ancestral music ensemble led by Juan Pueblo . Author/Activist/Professor Rudy Acuña and other special guests will also be attending. There will be vendors, community resource tables, food and drinks, video presentations and more, with updates announced on our website www.tiachucha.com. The event will be hosted by Tia Chucha's co-founder and acclaimed poet, writer, and author of fourteen books Luis J. Rodriguez . The event is free to the public.

A unique bookstore, art exhibit and cultural space with a seven-year history in the Northeast San Fernando Valley, Tia Chucha's Centro & Bookstore will continue to make the arts, dance, music, writing, theater, indigenous cosmology, and literacy the centerpiece of an on-going economic/cultural revival in the largely neglected Northeast Valley communities. Tia Chucha's artistic and educational resources are a much-needed creative stimulus in the midst of these hard economic times.

“In fact, it's precisely in hard times that the arts become the engine for community renewal and regeneration—the only way through today's chaos and uncertainties is with creativity,” asserts Luis Rodriguez , author of the best selling memoir, Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in LA .

Tia Chucha's new location is off the 210 Freeway, Hubbard Street exit, left at the Gladstone Avenue signal light, in the new yellow structure (across from the Rite Aid store). This is the third location for Tia Chucha's. After five years of bringing remarkable events and programming in Sylmar, Tia Chucha's moved to a temporary location in Lake View Terrace, offering music workshops, mural painting workshops, Aztec Dance, Young Warriors youth empowerment meetings, Open Mics, film nights, author readings, writing circles, musical events, healing circles, and community dialogues.

Answering the call to return to Sylmar, the non-profit Cultural Center & Bookstore will expand on it's extensive arts and literacy projects, including an annual Celebrating Words festival, slated for May 23, 2009 at Sylmar's El Cariso Park; and an annual benefit event called Celebrating Community & Culture: Si Se Puede/Yes We Can! to be held August 2, 2009 at Hollywood 's renowned Ford Amphitheater. This year the benefit will feature the Colombian musical group Very Be Careful , among others.

Tia Chucha's Centro Cultural & Bookstore is a 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization that provides arts/music/writing/dance/theater workshops with a bookstore, internet access, art exhibits and performance space. It also houses Tia Chucha Press, which recently celebrated twenty years of publishing quality cross-cultural poetry from around the country; a CD production project, Dos Manos Records ; and Young Warriors , an arts-based youth empowerment project.

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Tia Chucha's will host a booktable at The 6th Annual Feria del Libro: A Family Book Fair on Sunday, June 7th at E. First Street in Downtown Los Angeles. Come visit our booth (#1603) for great books and a chance to meet Charles Campbell, author of The Magic Coin, Ray Elizondo, author of The Last Pachuco, and Luis Rodriguez, author of Always Running!

for more info: www.feriadellibro.net

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Tia Chucha's Centro will be closed SATURDAY June 21st but come see us at The 3rd Annual Celebrating Words Festival in this day from 12pm-7pm!

.

Tia Chucha's will close at 5p.m. Monday December 31st and will be closed all day

Tuesday January 1, 2008. Have a blessed New Year!

Keep a look out for Tia Chucha's 2nd Annual Benefit Concert Celebrating

Community & Culture!

Musical line up and ticket sales available soon.

Tia Chucha's will close at 5:00 p.m. on Monday December 24th 2007 in recognition of Christmas Eve and will be closed Christmas day, Tuesday December 25th.

Tia Chucha's would like to thank all artists who painted our community support murals. We are pleased to have your art bless our performance stage.

We would like to recognize the following artists:

Ricardo Ortega, Vincent Ortega, Christine Vega, Ingrid Mares, Christina Tacata, Kathy Kennedy,

Arlene Mejorado, Juan Martin, and Tony Tovar.

 "REELISM" Look out for our NEW Film Nights kicking off Thursday January 3rd!

It will be a bi-weekly event every month with a featured film followed by a discussion.

Tia Chucha's Centro Cultural & Bookstore will be closed Thursday November 22, 2007

Tia Chucha's Centro Cultural & Bookstore will be closed

Monday September 3, 2007 in recognition of Labor Day

3:30 PM PDT August 30, 2007

 

New Location

February 18 2007, Tia Chucha's no longer operated out of its Sylmar location but instead re-locatd to a new space situated at 10258 Foothill Blvd., Lake View Terrace CA, 91342 . Our new location is only 15 minutes away from our old space and can be easily reached by taking the 90 & 91 metro bus line which will drop you right in front of the Center (Click Here For Bus Schedule) .  We have changed phone numbers and you can now reach us at (818)896-1479 . We will continue facilitating our workshops, book sales, and events but will no longer operate as a full fledged cafe. We are open now and ready to serve the community.

                                                         (Please be on the look out for our grand opening announcement coming soon!!!)

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There's a video of our

Tia Chucha's 4th Anniversary Celebration!

Click Here!

Now you can check us out on Myspace!

www.myspace.com/tiachuchascafe

 

Special Announcement!

Hearts & Hands -- A Pathway to Authentic Community
I am pleased to report that Hearts & Hands: Creating Community in Violent Times will be the core curriculum in a newly certified staff training program for State of California juvenile detention centers, halls, and camps.

More Info at : www.luisjrodriguez.com/blog

 

Where Art and Minds Meet--For a Change

Featured Articles

            Welcome to Tia Chucha's Café Cultural's official website. Tia Chucha's Café Cultural is a multi-arts cultural and technology center in the Northeast San Fernando Valley section of Los Angeles. We feature a bookstore, full coffee bar, art gallery, performance space and Internet café. Opened in December 2001, we held a Grand Opening on January 13, 2002 with some 400 participants. Since then we've had great musical acts, poetry, Hip Hop and spoken word expression, representatives from all the visual arts, comedy, storytelling, dance, theater, films, bands of all types and sounds, author readings and book signings, art receptions, and a documentary film project.

Grand Opening

            Some of the fantastic performers who have graced our space since opening are East LA's famed band Quetzal; Father of Xicano Music, Lalo Guerrero; authors Sandra Cisneros, Victor Villaseñor, Ruben Martinez, Jose Montoya, Adrienne Rich, and Yxta Maya Murray; storyteller Antonio Sacre; Native American poet John Trudell; musician John Densmore of the Doors; the Xicana rhythm and poetry group, Chihuatl Tonalli; the Xicano comedy theater group, Chusma; performance artist Raquel Salinas; the bands Candela, Ollin, Slowrider, Domingo Siete, Hip Hop Logia from Chile, and Los Cojolites from Veracruz, Mexico; the poetry group, En Lak Ech; musician and master flute maker, Erik "Wildcat" Sevilla; storyteller and mythologist Michael Meade; Ernie Perez and Rock A Mole's Music and Art Festival--and so much more.

      

                                                                                Culture Clash                                 Jose-Luis Orozco

 
           We now have regular events at Tia Chucha's including a Danza Azteca practice group on Monday nights; a film night sponsored by Elusive Minds Film Productions on Wednesday nights; an Open Mic/Spoken Word night on Friday, hosted by Victor E of the Xicano Conscious Hip Hop Group, El Vuh; a Peña Cultural geared to the Spanish-speaking community on the last Friday of the month; author readings and signings; and throughout the week and on Saturdays we have workshops on art, music, theater, literature, poetry, folk art and much more.

            Resident groups and artists at Tia Chucha's not-for-profit arm, Tia Chucha's Centro Cultural, include the E.A.R.Th. Theater Company; Danza Azteca; Tonantzin del Valle, a holistic women's natural healing circle; Jovenes Nobles, a young man's healing circle; the Hazze Hip Hop Dream Center's cultural workshops; Elusive Minds Film Productions that trains youth on film and produces independent films; artist/poet Juan Pueblo and musician Alejandro Laborde.

Chusma

            In two years, we've been strongly embraced by the mostly Xicano, Mexicano and Central American communities of the Northeast San Fernando Valley. We've also had support from communities throughout California and other states (as far as New York and Florida). People from all ethnic groups and skin colors have visited and contributed with their hearts, their minds and myriad of talents.

            Articles on Tia Chucha's have appeared in The Los Angeles Times, the Daily News, North Valley Magazine, Los Angeles Magazine, LA Times Magazine, People en Espanol, Criticas magazine, LA Weekly (Pick of the Week), as well as a special on PBS-TV's "Realidades" show and KCET's "Life & Times in LA." In September of 2003, Tia Chucha's founding partners--Enrique Sanchez, Trini Rodriguez and Luis Rodriguez--were designated as "Local Heroes of the Community" by KCET-TV and the Union Bank of California.

            Explore our website. Go to our links. Check out our Centro's activities, including links to our special projects: Tia Chucha Press (a poetry publisher), Dos Manos Records (producing CDs of music and poetry), and our very own online magazine, Xispas .

            And don't forget to visit Tia Chucha's--take part in one of the most innovative and imaginative cultural spaces in the world.

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Featured Articles

September 2005 issue of

Latina Magazine

(Vol. 10 No.2, Featuring Eva Mendes on the Cover)