Who are LatinXcluded?

LatinXcluded initiated from a conversation of feeling invisible as a community, people in the UK enjoy our music, the food and restaurants but, never fully recognise us as being part of the UK. Talented Latinx people that we don’t hear about in the UK because of the lack of exposure not to mention how hard they have to work to just get recognised in the first place. We wanted to work on changing our representation, but we realised we can’t do it unless we are recognised as an ethnicity on the census and vital forms that will set the example to the rest of the institutions, encouraging them to do the same. We started by having casual conversations with King’s College London to then be having meetings in which they agreed to change the way they collected data about Latinx students and workers by the following September. We did talk about what it meant to us to be Latinas in London in a short documentary ‘More than Other’ and during the summer of 2019 we met with the CEO of Lambeth Andrew Travers that promised to add an additional box including our ethnicity on their forms. I hope to see more opportunities and a better representation of my community in a couple of years.

More than “other” – A Film by Romano Pizzichini

Credits:

A @capuri.tv production | Directors: Romano Pizzichini and @brenommoreira1
Producers: Romano Pizzichini, @brenommoreira1, @tzmascarenhas, @edurezen
DOP: @jotapeg | Editor: @coppercooper ar @the_assembly_rooms |

Music: @james_claremont | Grade: @thomasmangham at @millchannell |

Sound mix and design: @lucas.trigg at @clearcutsound |

Sound recordist: @andreitudorgrigore | Title & Poster Design: @j666k
Edit Producer: @eppiebowler | Assistant Editor: Anna Hyde |

Post Producer: Ellie Thwaites | 2D Artist: Valeria Scalamandre
Shot on 16mm @kodak_shootfilm

Active or Founding Members

Valentina Andrade

Valentina is an activist and campaigner. She is 21 years old, originally born in Bogota, Colombia is an alumni of The Advocacy Academy. In 2017, Valentina launched a campaign in parliament to help more Latin American youth to get into university. emphasising the invivisliblty Latinx students face, here she began her work with KCL. She is also is part of the core team for the Community Land Trust campaign to build genuinely affordable homes for people in South London and works for several small-scale charities.

As well as focusing on the Latin American community she has also been interviewed on Channel 4 to commemorate 100 years since (some) women were given the vote. Valentina is passionate about encouraging academic achievement in the Latinx community, she’s planning to base her masters in media communications and journalism post graduating from King’s College London in 2022.

Elizabeth Alvarado

Elizabeth is a 22 year old Ecuadorian from South London studying at Royal Holloway. She was part of The Advocacy Academy fellowship from 2016-207 and since graduating has worked on the programme as a changemaker. She is passionate about drama and the arts and has been fighting for Latinx rights since she became an advocate.

Alongside Valentina, she has already been crucial in ensuring that the actors involved in this show can really relate to their unique experience in terms of their working-class background, gender, mother-tongues and dual heritages as being both from South London and Latinx. She has been key in challenging any representation of homogeneity of the Latinx community, strongly advocating for a real diversity of queer, afro-Latinx, white-passing, Portuguese and Spanish speaking actors.

Cecilia Alfonso-Eaton

Cecilia is a 20 year old of Cuban and British heritage. She is currently studying Drama and English Literature at the University of Manchester. Cecilia went through the Advocacy Academy Fellowship in 2018 - 2019 where she was part of developing the campaign LatinXcluded with Krishmary and Zharinck which fights for the visiblity and recognition of Latin American students in Universities. In 2019, Latinxcluded got Kings College University London to include Latin American as an ethnicity on their application forms for students and staff! This was a big win for the campaign and followed on the incredible work of Valentina who had been working with Kings beforehand.

Cecilia likes to write poetry and has recently developed a love for writing plays which she hopes she'll be able to do in the future. She hopes to write roles for Latinx actors and tell the stories of the community. She also has a passion for community theatre and exploring the ways in which using drama can help create sense of belonging and unity. Cecilia is hoping to study a masters in acting after finishing her undergraduate degree.

Vanessa Galvis

Hola, I’m Vanessa TAA alumni 2015. I started TAA as the first Latinx member with the intention to fight for the representation of the Latinx community - 5 years later I am co-organiser of Latinxcluded a collective made of amazing activists working towards the same goal.

Krishmary Ramdhun

Krishmary is currently 20 years old and moved to south London in 2010, originally from Venezuela. She was part of The Advocacy Academy fellowship from 2018-2019 and since graduating she focused on LatinXcluded a youth-led campaign targeting the underrepresentation of her community. She is a Marketing student passionate about encouraging a sense of belonging through a positive representation of Latinx individuals in social media platforms supporting the visibility of the latinx community.

Beside accomplishing getting the Latinx ethnicity recognised on forms at Kings College London and Lambeth for data collection, she has been featured in ‘More than Other’ Documentary showing a realistic portrayal faced by the community. This led to being interviewed by the New statesman interested in the lack of data and absence of the Latin American category in official forms.