Help Shape Glasgow’s Latin American Cultural and Arts Centre
The Latin American community is one of the fastest-growing migrant groups in the UK but remains underrepresented, particularly in Scotland. Despite growing research, much of it overlooks Latin Americans in Scotland, focusing on more visible or vulnerable groups. Over the past decade, Soledad Montañez’s research has revealed a significant lack of dedicated cultural spaces for Latin American and Spanish-speaking communities. While interest in Latin American cultures is increasing, there is a pressing need for more inclusive and nuanced representation of their heritage, arts, languages, and histories in Scotland and the UK.
We are therefore in the process of developing a Latin American Cultural and Arts Centre in the heart of Glasgow — a space dedicated to celebrating the richness and diversity of Latin American cultures through art, music, food, language, and community engagement.
As part of this exciting project, we are inviting individuals, organisations, and community members to contribute their ideas and insights to help shape the vision and design of the centre. We want to ensure that this space reflects the aspirations of Latin Americans in Scotland and fosters meaningful connections across cultures.
These series of workshops aim to creatively and collaboratively explore what kind of space the Latin American community wants in Glasgow. Centring joy, memory, and voice, through a non-extractive, arts-based and feminist facilitation process, gather and collate voices towards the vision of a Latin American Arts Cultural Centre. This initial process aims to raise awareness, build relationships, and generate actionable insight for the development of a Latin American Arts Cultural Centre in Glasgow.
The workshops will be facilitated by Mansi Panjwani (on behalf of the collective) in collaboration with Graphic facilitator Clare Mills.
The project is funded by the Creative Launch Fund, University of Glasgow.
Draft Programme
Stakeholder & Co-Creation Lab
Location: ARC, Studio 2, University of Glasgow
Date: 1 September 2025 | Time: 4-7pm
Refreshments provided.
Community Gathering: “Weaving Our Futures”
Location: Kinning Park Community Complex
Date: Saturday 6 September 2025 | Time: 11am-4pm
A participatory, artful community gathering that centres joy, memory, and belonging through collective expression. The event includes dance, a community meal by Soul Food Sisters, grounding circle with poetry, music and movement, walking conversations.
Free but ticketed.
Online Workshop: “Cartographies of Care”
Platform: Zoom
Date: Late Sept (TBD)
Design focus: A gentle online gathering to bring in Latin voices beyond Glasgow, especially those unable to join in person. This space prioritises accessibility, story-sharing, and imagining space across borders. The space holds questions such as:
● What does cultural safety feel like, when you’re far from “home”?
● What kind of spaces hold us when institutions don’t?
● How do we carry home with us?
For further information and updates: https://mariasoledadmontanez.com/blog/
Work in progress: The Latin American Communities in Scotland: the hidden histories, the loud stories.
Latin American communities in Scotland are under-represented, under-researched and remain invisible, despite a rich history of migration that spans almost five decades. This project aims to map the Latin American community, recording the stories and tracing the histories of Latin Americans in Scotland.
Thank you to everyone who took part in this project. My article on the Latin American communities in Scotland will be published in the Bulletin of Latin American Research in 2026.
Is there a Latin American Community in Scotland?
This event was hosted by Latinx Collective Scotland, a group of Latin American women based in Glasgow.
In light of the Scotland Census 2022, the event was created as an opportunity for the Latin American communities to come together and discuss their identities as Latin Americans in Scotland.
So are Latin Americans recognised as an ethnic group?
Research based on the 2011-Census, in particular Cathy McIlwaine’s Towards visibility, states that the Latin American community – is the fastest growing migrant community in the UK -more than ethnic Chinese and not much less than the Polish population in the UK in 2011 (McIlwaine et al).
In 2012, Southwark Council in South London became the first borough to recognise Latin Americans as an ethnic minority, and then Lambeth, Islington, and Hackney. Arts Council England has recognised “Latinx” as an ethnic group. All this has been achieved after a successful campaign carried out by the Latin American Recognition Campaign and the Coalition of Latin Americans in the UK.
This event wanted to open up the conversation, to hear your stories, to exchange ideas, to make the Latin American voices heard.
The Latinx Collective is formed by a group of Latin American migrant women based in Glasgow, which I am member of.
Dr María Soledad Montañez 