La Peña Cultural Center originated in the diaspora of Chilean exiles after the 1973 coup, and was inspired by the “peñas” then popular in South America, which served as gathering places for artists and thinkers – offering food, music, intellectual exchange, and popular education to revolutionary artistic and political movements.

It was with this ethos that La Peña Cultural Center was founded in 1975. Since that time, LP has presented intentional public programming that centers and celebrates BIPOC culture bearers and audiences, with deep connections across the pan-Latinx, Afro-Caribbean, and Indigenous diasporic communities.

Today, La Peña continues to be a center of transformative gathering. All of our programs engage our mission to preserve and celebrate cultural traditions, and to empower individuals and communities through access to arts education and professional development. Each event model is a crucial piece of our programming vision, which is divided into the following eight pillars: roots arts preservation, community celebration and solidarity, support for emerging artists, social justice movements, memory and historical grounding, popular education, cultural strategy, and digital documentation.