Taller is a community-based cultural organization whose primary purpose is to preserve and promote Puerto Rican arts and culture. We represent and support all Latinx cultural expressions and our common roots. By embracing our shared heritage and facilitating intercultural understanding we empower our community.
We are guided by the vision of a proud Latinx community that is connected, interculturally aware, and economically vibrant in a society that values its own diversity. Taller catalyzes community engagement through our arts and cultural resources that build bridges between all communities within the Puerto Rican and Latinx Diaspora.
Located in North Philadelphia, Taller was founded in 1974 by a group of artists and community activists. Operating out of the basement of ASPIRA, Taller offered graphic arts training that both connected Puerto Rican youth to their cultural heritage and provided them with a vocational skill set. Emerging from these grassroots beginnings, Taller now occupies and owns a 24,000 square foot building that has dramatically increased our capacity to reach new audiences while continuing to center our local community. As we approach our 50th year, Taller continues to nurture individual self-realization and community empowerment through after-school enrichment programs, multidisciplinary events and performances, a growing archive of scholarly resources, a bilingual bookstore, and world class exhibitions. Known widely as El Corazón Cultural del Barrio (The Cultural Heart of Latinx Philadelphia), Taller is the longest-operating Latinx-focused arts organization in the region.
Taller’s history speaks to our belief that our community members possess innate creative talents. Our community is a mosaic of artists that include salsa dancers, bomba musicians, aspiring stage actors, budding fashion designers, accomplished muralists, neighborhood historians, and celebrated writers. Taller was born of a need for the self-determined representation and inclusion of historically underrepresented audiences. Our community is not a passive audience—they are members of an ever expanding ensemble of culture bearers who, when presented with the opportunity, connect to their Latinx heritage, embrace creativity, and own their personal and communal stories with pride.
