UWM’s Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) recently teamed up with UWM ArtsECO and the Mexican Consulate in Milwaukee to bring an arts and culture program about migration to students at South Division High School.

These students, currently taking coursework in education or Latin American studies, are no strangers to the way that migration has shaped communities in Milwaukee and beyond. This gathering in the SDHS library the morning of November 11 offered them an opportunity to deepen that conversation and consider how different experiences of migration shape people’s families and emotional lives, and how art can help express some of those experiences.

The program was centered around the innovative animated documentary Home is Somewhere Else (2023), which presents three stories from Mexican-American youth about their migration experiences in their own words. The film then pairs those firsthand testimonies with rich animated visuals, each story with its own artistic style.

At South Division, students watched the segment “A Tale of Two Sisters” – about sisters whose differing documentation status affect their career goals in different ways. After briefly reflecting on the obstacles and resilience in their stories, students then had the opportunity to speak with Mexican directors and animators Carlos Hagerman and Jorge Villalobos, on topics ranging from their creative process to their motivation for sharing these stories.

As one student commented, “this story really opened my eyes to this experience [of migration]”; others shared that the segment reminded them of their own families, with different generations living across countries and languages.

After learning more about the steps involved in gathering and representing these stories, students had the opportunity to reflect on their own experiences of home through visual art. In an exercise designed by UWM alumna Calea Sowell and current Art Education student Gaby Duarte, the students learned how to fold their own zines and then used watercolor, ink pens, colored pencils, and more to share scenes of heritage, belonging, and identity from their own lives.

Combining this film screening with artistic creation and reflective and interpretive dialogue allowed students to draw on diverse strengths as they engaged more deeply with the topic of migration and how it affects all of our lives.

Interested UWM affiliates can stream the full documentary Home is Somewhere Else through the UWM library using their ePanther login.