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More than 60 residents, students and community members gathered June 28 at the UMass Amherst University Village Community Center for “Cultural Mosaic: 2025 Summer Art & Culture Showcase,” a community-wide celebration of multilingualism, heritage expression and collective creativity. The event featured over 80 original works of art, including painting, calligraphy, photography, crafts and digital storytelling, contributed by participants ranging in age from preschoolers to retirees.

The showcase invited local families, UMass affiliates and international residents to explore themes of identity, memory, and home through multilingual visual and narrative media. The event was organized by Li Hou, a doctoral candidate in the College of Education’s Language, Literacy & Culture (LLC) program and an instructor in the College Writing Program, and co-hosted with MAPLE Culture, an organization promoting intercultural connection through the arts.

Hou says that the idea for Cultural Mosaic emerged not just from a love of art, but from a recognition of urgent cultural and linguistic needs within the UMass community.

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“I’m deeply engaged in exploring how language, identity, and education intersect in multilingual communities,” says Hou. “University Village is home to many international students and their families.”

Hou says that many of these families have expressed a strong interest in language exchange. “For example,” she says, “some family members may not speak English fluently, but they speak Spanish, Chinese, Korean and other languages, and they’re eager to connect with neighbors and learn from one another.”

Additionally, the path of pursuing education abroad for many of them is filled with challenges and uncertainties. In the face of political uncertainty and cultural fragmentation, Hou says that Cultural Mosaic became an “act of quiet resistance,” an invitation to gather, share stories, and affirm the value of linguistic and cultural diversity.

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“This is our asset,” said Hou. “The diversity of our community is not a challenge, it’s our strength. The university will only thrive if we continue to embrace the values and perspectives brought by international students and multilingual families.”

By foregrounding heritage languages, cross-cultural narratives and multilingual expression, Hou says that the event aligned directly with the LLC program’s emphasis on inclusive literacies and social justice in education. It also gave shape to an embodied form of language exchange, not only across spoken tongues, but across generations, visual modes, and cultural frames.

“Through this event,” Hou adds, “we hope to foster a deeper, more human understanding of what cultural diversity truly means, and why it’s essential to the future of education.”

Funding for the event was provided by the Chancellor’s Community, Democracy, and Dialogue (CDD) working group, which was created to promote dialogue, academic inquiry and respect for difference in addressing challenging topics.