In this month’s episode of “Artistas in the Capital,” representation: one puzzle piece at a time
By hola | Published
Right: Marie Claire Vasquez Durán with her daughter Mila
Left: María Victoria Abreu Lugar with her son Dylan
How do you pass down culture? Cook food? Make crafts? Read stories? Two Washington area Latina moms found a fun way to share their roots not only with their own children but with other families as well.
Marie Claire Vasquez Durán and María Victoria Abreu Lugar, who are originally from the Dominican Republic, founded a board game company called Dutidú after immigrating to the United States and starting their own families. During the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, they faced a difficult challenge: there were no games to entertain their children that were also culturally relevant to their Dominican and Latino roots. They took matters into their own hands, creating Dutidú and their own Latinx representation in a place that originally had none.
“If we don’t do it ourselves, I don’t know when someone else is going to think about it,” Vasquez Durán recalls thinking at the time.
In this episode of “Artistas in the Capital,” Vasquez Durán and Abreu Lugar speak more about their journey as entrepreneurs, their struggles and the costs involved in starting a company. They share their motivations, inspiration and advice for all the aspiring entrepreneurs out there.
“You just have to start. Even if you start small, but you have to start,” Vasquez Durán says.
About “Artistas in the Capital”
“Artistas in the Capital” is a monthly conversation with local artists, authors, dancers, entrepreneurs and researchers, ranging widely from the local community to the universality of art. Each episode sheds light on important topics and provides a platform for lifting up artists, writers and other D.C. Latino creatives.
The interviews were conducted by interns in Hola Cultura’s Storytelling Program for Experiential Learning (SPEL). SPEL is dedicated to bringing together D.C. high school and college interns with fellows and mentors for story lab sessions and workshops that prepare them for their futures through the production of accurate digital media published on the Hola Cultura website.
— Story by Crystal Lee
— Edited by Jordan Luz
Meet our “Artistas
in the Capital”
podcast team…
Emily Chapman
Emily Chapman started working with Hola Cultura as a remote website intern during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, logging in each week from the Midwest.
Chapman went into web design after completing a bachelor’s degree in English with a minor in art and Spanish at Mount Mary University in Milwaukee. Her university had a student news magazine that she enjoyed working on and eventually, ignited her interest in web design. Later, she decided to pursue a career in web design and went back to school to earn an associate’s degree in web and digital media from Milwaukee Area Technical College.
Today, Chapman masterfully manages Hola Cultura’s website while working a full-time job as a web designer in Wisconsin. She is behind the scenes, making sure each episode of the “Artistas in the Capital” podcast, the podcast transcript and links to the artists’ own web pages are all readily available to readers. She came up with the idea of creating an interactive PDF for the podcast transcripts to make them easy on the eyes and overall keep people’s attention.
“How can we make sure that the experience someone gets is an engaging experience?” is a question Chapman says is central to her work.
Chapman also posts the English stories on the websites and makes sure everything is accessible and easy to navigate.
Since “Artistas in the Capital” is the third podcast she has worked on, she says that although each one is different, there is always something to take away and replicate from those experiences.
