Empowering Culture Through Creativity in Schools

IDEAL PDX is proud to offer Studio Latino, our Arts Education program designed to serve students across public and private schools in the Portland Public Schools, Reynolds, and Beaverton School Districts.

Studio Latino offers high-quality, culturally rooted art instruction in the classroom, led by Latin American and multicultural teaching artists, through hands-on activities in painting, mixed media, clay, mural-making, traditional crafts, and more. Students have an opportunity to explore their creativity while deepening their connections to Latino heritage and community. Each class is adaptable for elementary, middle, or high school students and includes all necessary materials, bilingual instruction (English/Spanish), and options for integrating cultural history.

All of our classes are thoughtfully designed and can be adapted to meet the needs of each school community. Our team collaborates closely with educators and administrators to develop curriculum that aligns with the Oregon Department of Education’s Arts Learning Standards, fostering growth in artistic processes, cultural literacy, and creative expression.

Serving PRE K - 12th Grades

Our Curriculum Includes:

Collaborative Mural Design

Youth co-create murals that reflect identity, heritage, and community values. From brainstorming to painting, this immersive experience emphasizes teamwork and pride in public art.

Paper Crafts from Latin America

From piñatas and papel picado to kites and folk masks, students explore paper-based crafts tied to celebrations and everyday beauty across Latin America.

Mixed Media and Collage

Using recycled materials, magazine clippings, textiles, and natural elements, students explore identity, expression, and storytelling through layered artworks.

Nature & Art Connection

Projects inspired by the natural world, incorporating flowers, leaves, seeds, and local ecology to reflect environmental awareness and ancestral wisdom.

Creative Movement and Music

This is a high-energy, imagination-rich space where rhythm becomes story and story becomes movement. Through guided musical play, improvisation, and collaborative creation, students explore how sound lives in the body. Together students experiment with instruments, voice, and ensemble-building games that strengthen coordination, confidence, and creative agency. The class nurtures curiosity and expressive freedom while holding a supportive circle in which students of all ages can move, listen deeply, and create in community.

Art with Geometry

In this hands-on class, students explore the connection between math and art by using geometric shapes, symmetry, and patterns to create visually striking designs.

Mandalas

Combining mindfulness and visual art, students create watercolor mandalas centered on gratitude, harmony, and emotional well-being.

Repujado

Inspired by Mexican corazones sagrados and folk metalwork, students emboss and decorate aluminum foil to create textured artworks with cultural and spiritual significance.

Textiles & Folk Patterns

Students explore fabric art through weaving, painting, or stitching, using traditional motifs and geometric patterns from Indigenous and Latino American cultures

Clay

Students learn clay techniques, including hand-building and sculpting, while exploring cultural symbolism and the art of storytelling.

Capoeira and Latin Rythms

Capoeira is an energetic, physical, musical, and community-centered art form originally developed by enslaved Africans and Afro-descendants in Northeast Brazil that today blends kicks, dodges, acrobatics, music, dance, and ritual into a vibrant celebration of movement and creative resistance. Classes invite kids to explore movement and rhythm through songful speech, playful drills, partner work, and improvisational choreography inspired by Samba, Rumba, Son Jarocho, and more, all while building strength, coordination, confidence, and a strong sense of community.