The Tanda program is a cohort program that aids individuals with their research and practice through self-directed and collective learning by way of gathering and sharing resources, conversations, and knowledges.

It interweaves the formats of seminars, book clubs, research groups, and tandas. Tanda is a spanish term for an informal money lending circle that is formed amongst friends, families, and acquaintances. This short-term loan club is a cross-cultural concept that is also known as a susu, cundina, vaca, hui, paluwagan, and jamia, to name a few.

An example of a tanda is as follows: A tanda is formed between five people. Each person in the tanda puts $100 into a pot every week to total a $500 pot. The first member gets the $500 pot the first week. The second member gets the next $500 pot the second week, and the third member gets the next $500 pot the third week. This continues until each member in the tanda has received the $500 pot. Usually tandas are formed out of one member’s financial emergency or if a community project needs to be funded. Tandas become ways relationships strengthen, news and stories get exchanged, and community support and trust grows.

Following that concept, instead of waging money, participants in the Tanda program wage a subject. Each participant chooses to wage a topic that they are researching to put in the program’s syllabus (pot). That syllabus will consist of weekly sessions and every session will be assigned a subject taken from the pot. Each participant, except the one who waged the week’s topic, will research that week’s subject and regroup in every session to present and discuss their research and findings. The member who waged the week’s topic co-facilitates the session.

Lorena Cruz Santiago: Visual Sovereignty: Understanding the Ethics of Depicting Indigenous Culture in Visual Art

Tiffany M Johnson: Marronage: Acts Between Freedom and Captivity

Karen Dana Cohen: Making Visible the Invisible: Labor of Mothering as Immigrants in the Contemporary Culture and What Acquiring a New Language Provides

Clau Rocha: Bloodletting as Embodied Ritual: Latinx Tattoos

Alex Santana: Challenging Biometrics, AI, and Facial Recognition Technologies

Charles Ryan Long: The Love, Rage & Roses it will take to Welcome the Death of White Manhood 

Sarita Garcia: Fantasyscapes: Mercados, Markets and Merchandise; Looking in the self-made maze of Latinx flea markets

Natasha Mijares: Urban Wind Borne Debris & Environmental Racism

Marina M. Álvarez: Graffiti in the Urban Spheres of Mexico & Chile: Tools of Anti-colonial Resistance

Katia Pérez Fuentes: Cosmic Patterns for Creative Practitioners: Astrology and Art

Joseph Josué Mora: Egress: Politicized Existence In U.S. and Art Spaces

Eva Mayhabal Davis: Collaboration and Cooperative Protocols

Javier Jasso: Dreams, Alzheimer, and Autoconstrucción

Victor Zhagui: The Bossa Nova/Tropicália Movement in Brazil and Surrealism

Jennifer Ligaya Senecal: Navigating Space: Hoodoo and ATR rooted Performance Practices in the Deep South

José Rosa: Afro-Latinx Presence in Caribbean Visual Communication

Frank Vega: South American celebrations and traditions in relation to Indigenism

Elsa Muñoz: Relational theory (action) as a response to the Anthropocene

Juan Molina Hernández: Home, haven and heaven

Giselle Mira-Diaz: Generational trauma through an immigrant lens

Astro Escudero: The Plantationocene

Daye Angely: Bending perception with science and imagination