“I was elated because I felt that receiving the award was really a manifestation of the mission of Gitana,” Cecilia Nadal said of receiving the 2014 Adelante Civic Award.
“The Civic Award is given to organizations or individuals who, as a direct result of their activities, have contributed to improving the quality of life of community members,” said Karlos Ramirez, executive director of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Metro St. Louis. “Nadal is a talented Latina who has made a difference in our community as a civic leader.”
As founder and executive director of Gitana Productions, Inc., a not-for-profit arts and education organization, Nadal has committed her life to “bringing people together in the most effective way possible,” she said.
Bring people together she has. Since 1996, Gitana has inspired intercultural communication in highly segregated areas throughout the region with its arts programs.
“What makes us unique among arts organizations is that our primary mission is to use the arts the way of bringing together different cultural groups in St. Louis,” she said. “It is not just to do theater or concerts, but to bring people together who normally don’t come together.”
Gitana’s recent activities include “Karamu: Fiesta of Latin and African American Music,” which featured world-renowned singer Denise Thimes. Nadal said watching concertgoers of all shades forget about their cultural differences and enjoy the music together touched her deeply. “All I could do was shed a tear,” she said.
Gitana also produced “Soy Yo!” by African-American playwright Mariah Richardson. “We showed what it’s like to be a person who has mixed identity, who is both African-American as well as Latina,” Nadal said.
In-depth discussions on race relations in St. Louis were also held before the production. “We had five women who were Afro-Latina talk about how they felt being of mixed identity in St. Louis,” Nadal said.
As someone who also identifies as Afro-Latina, she said she found the inspiration to start Gitana when she first came to St. Louis in 1968 to attend Saint Louis University.
“My father is a black Puerto Rican, and my mother was from St. Louis,” Nadal said. “I remember getting to St. Louis and being really struck by the fact that certain people lived in certain neighborhoods, but there were not many neighborhoods where people lived together. I wanted to do something about that.”
That’s where Gitana comes in. “I finally decided that one of the easier ways to [create change] was not to just talk about it, but to use the arts to do it,” she said.
Global Education through the Arts is Gitana’s community project that provides arts education to economically disadvantaged youth in South St. Louis.
“In 2007, our organization decided that we wanted to do something educational in an ongoing way,” Nadal said. “It was clear to us that we had to provide education to people to give them information they can use in practical ways, so in 2008 Global Education through the Arts was formed.”
This “incredibly successful” program “uses music drama and dance core classes in racially isolated areas so children can get to know each other,” she said.
“It is important that we bring African-American and immigrant kids together to learn about each other’s culture, especially since there are more immigrant children moving into middle-class and working-class neighborhoods where the most segregation occurs,” she said.
She said that for African Americans, there are new challenges arising with increasing immigrant populations across the region. “For the African-American community, we’re being challenged to open up and learn something about each other,” she said.
She thinks the best way to conquer some of these challenges is to partake in community art programs and special events like the ones Gitana offers and produces. After all, she said, engagement in the arts “is one of the least stressful ways of helping people to see our similarities, as well as our differences.”
Marissa Price is a St. Louis American intern from Saint Louis University. Follow her on Twitter @missmprice12.
