Somos Arte: Creating Access Through Art and Community

Feature | Humboldt Park, Illinois | Journalism coursework

A feature done on Somos Arte, a Latina-run nonprofit in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood that uses art and education to serve youth, families, and communities across the city. Through interviews with organization leaders and on-site reporting at Casa Arte, the story explores the nonprofit’s growth, community impact, and challenges sustaining its programming.

When you push open the door to Casa Arte on West North Avenue, the first thing you notice is the color.

A mural stretches across the back wall—purple bleeding into orange, yellow folding into green, streaks of pink and blue layered over one another. A sculpted tree trunk rises from the paint itself, almost breaking through the wall. A tiger lounges along one of its branches. White, cloud-like stuffing spills outward, threaded with tiny LED lights that glow softly from within. Cactuses, roses and butterflies scatter across the dreamscape.

The room is small, close quarters, cozy if you ask the women who built it, but it pulses with life.

Casa Arte is home is home to Somos Arte, a Latina-run nonprofit transforming access to art and education in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood.

Founded in 2019 by Executive Director Sabrina Alicea and Creative Director Melanie Lopez, Somos Arte began in a garage with little more than spray paint and a shared vision.

Today, the organization operates out of its North Avenue space, offering workshops, mural installations, youth programming, and free community events across the city. “We started in my garage with just a few artists and some spray paint,” Alicea said.

For Lopez, the growth still feels surreal. “Literally, all of our materials were in my garage, just stationed in my parking spot”.

On any given weekend, Casa Arte hums with activity. Murals climb the walls. Finished projects hang beside works still in progress. Cricut machines sit next to 3D printers and shirt presses.

People lean over tables during different kinds of workshops or community events. Adults enjoy a paint-and-sip event that welcomes all skill levels. Families and friends drift in for free art days, where no one is turned away for lack of payment.

 Educational Program Director Lorimar Matos says the organization was built on a simple belief: that art and education belong together and that everyone deserves access to both.“We believe in the power of art and education, and how those two worlds mix together,” Matos said. “The community deserves to have access to that.”

Though founded by Latina women, Somos Arte is intentionally expansive in its reach. The nonprofit partners with organizations across Chicago, bringing programming into neighborhoods, schools and migrant shelters.

“We’re based in Humboldt Park, but we serve the whole city,” Matos said.

Through partnerships with After School Matters, teens are given not only a place to create but a pathway toward futures in arts and education.

Beyond paint and programming, Somos Arte has become something harder to measure.

At its annual “Books and Backpacks” event, more than 300 families received school supplies in 2023. Children left not just with backpacks but with haircuts, face paint and access to a donation tent stocked year-round through community partnerships.

“Art is for everyone,” Alicea said.

Teen program director and resident artist Sarah Sosa describes the organization as more than a collection of classes.

 “We don’t just offer workshops, we provide a space where people can explore who they are, and where they want to go,” Sosa said.

For some participants, that exploration begins quietly.

“We’ve seen individuals who were shy and reserved become confident and expressive,” Matos said.

Inside Casa Arte, the outside world feels distant. The noise softens. The divisions that often define public life – political, culture, the economy –lose their urgency beneath layers of paint and shared laughter.

But sustaining that world requires more than creativity.

Grants are competitive and unpredictable. In 2023, Somos Arte received its largest grant to date: $30,000. The funding helped sustain programming and materials, but it was spent within months.

“Sometimes we hesitate to ask for more, but the truth is that money goes right back into the community,” Alicea said.

The team hopes to expand into the vacant building next door, creating room for specialized classes in digital art, sculpture and screen printing. Right now, they say, they are bursting at the seams.

“We have the tools. We have the artists, what we need now is space and sustained support to keep growing,” Matos said.

As the LED lights flicker inside the cotton clouds of the mural, the sound of different people clacking away at work, and the rustling of projects coming to life fill the room. The tree on the wall stretches upward, its branches carrying a tiger that looks both playful and at rest.

In a neighborhood often defined by struggle, Casa Arte insists on something else: art, community, and opportunity.

Inside its small but vibrant walls, that vision continues to grow.

(The pug’s name is Juice)