a hiccup: 

a short lived interruption, or disruption, or change in the natural flow of things; an exhalation.

hiccup, Inc.

Originally founded as a collective, hiccup (Hialeah Contemporary Culture Project) became a non-profit organization incorporated in Florida in March, 2019 to promote social engagement through art, culture and research, in Hialeah and beyond. As an organization, it supports as well as incites creative practices that merge social engagement with ethnographic research, and spark civic imaginings of new forms of sociability, participation and organization in an urban, mostly immigrant setting.

We thus seek to re-situate post-industrial, mostly immigrant communities and communities of color, traditionally viewed as at the periphery of both society and the intellectual and art worlds, at the center of inquiry, creativity, and socio-cultural action.

We also seek to intervene in a city’s double consciousness: in the gaps created by residents’ ideals of community and life horizons and their daily experience as citizens and urban dwellers, as well as in those between how they see themselves and how others stereotype them. In short, we aim to generate innovative vision of society an environmentally-sensible future.

Our projects or hiccups emerge from in-­depth community knowledge, ethnographic research, and first-­hand experiences to elicit, highlight and promote the creative potential and sociability of urban and suburban dwellers.

hiccup was a recipient of a 2014 Knight Arts Challenge award (2016-2019). It was also a finalist to the 2014 People's Choice Award.