A cultural experience comes to The Beanhive

AirWeBreatheFor the next two weeks, a downtown coffee shop is showcasing The Air We Breathe, a project that explores Galesburg’s immigrant community.

Project creator Chelsea Castillo Macek was on hand last night at The Beanhive where her photographs of area immigrants will be on display through November 1st.

As Macek explained, the project evolved from her work as Intercultural Outreach Specialist with the Carl Sandburg College Literacy Coalition.

More than a dozen photos of immigrants from Vietnam, Nicaragua, Syria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ukraine and many others line the coffee shop walls.

All the photos are of people who live in the Galesburg area and are or have been students at the CSC learning center.

Macek tells WGIL that Galesburg has become something of a cultural melting pot.

“I have just been amazed at how diverse and how different our international community was than I had originally thought,” Macek says. “Because I’m born and raised in the area, but I just moved back in the past year, and I really truly think that the international community is much more diverse than it ever has been in Galesburg.”

The project is aimed at building connections between the community at large and the area’s immigrant population.

More information and video interviews can be found on the Air We Breathe Facebook page.

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