San Jose

Handbook for Artists Working in Community

In this day and age of continued disparities, injustices, pandemics and systemic racism, artists are critical agents of change in our communities. More than ever, we need artists to be catalysts and…


Queer and Undocumented: The Art and Activism of Coming Out, and Coming Out

June is Immigrant Heritage Month as well as Refugee Awareness Month. In solidarity and support, we will run a series of artist profiles and features this month about the experiences of undocumented…


Toolkit Toolkit

Yes, this is what you think it is. Since the launch of Creative Exchange in 2014, over 6,000 toolkits have been downloaded from the site, facilitating artist-led projects, business skills…


Creative Exchange Call for Toolkits!

As the national program of Springboard for the Arts, Creative Exchange hosts free, practical toolkits created by artists and arts organizations along with our editorial work sharing the stories and…


5 Questions with Creative Exchange: What we have learned from our artists

Since August 2016, Creative Exchange has been asking each of our Artists With Impact a series of five questions, which appear at the end of every profile. We did this to create a thread of continuity…


Public Transformation hits the road

Two months ago, I had no idea that I was going to buy a school bus and travel across the country interviewing rural-based artists - I had no idea that I would need to learn how to insure a converted…


MACLA/Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana Videos

When MACLA/Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana was approached by Springboard for the Arts through the Creative Exchange Leading Organizations pilot to make the Spanish translation of the…


New toolkits from the Leading Organizations!

Creative Exchange is driven by a principle that more is more - the more stories we can tell, the more resources we can share, the more connections we can make, the more we can show how important art…


Trabajo de Arte: Aptitudes de Negocios para Artistas

Gracias por su interés en Trabajo de Arte: Aptitudes de Negocios para Artistas. Esto fue hecho por Springboard for the Arts con la ayuda del Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana y las…


Grupo Folklorico Los Laureles

Grupo Folklorico Los Laureles conserves traditional Mexican folklorico dance and culture

Grupo Folklorico Los Laureles in San Jose is a dance academy and professional dance company co-founded by Ashley Lopez-Gonzalez and Cesar Gonzalez. They started in the summer of 2007, teaching…


DMC Youth

San Jose's MACLA engages a multicultural community

In early 2016, San Jose’s Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana (MACLA) opened the exhibition “Custom Lives: Rasquache Renaissance.” The show exhibited colorful, cartoon-like sculptures of…


2 Years of Creative Exchange!

It’s hard to believe, but Creative Exchange just turned 2! The platform was launched in 2014 in response to the question, “How do we support a movement around the power of local art and artists on a…


Cast of

Teatro Nahual is the Bay Area's first and only entirely Spanish-language theatre group

When Verónica Meza, founder and artistic director of Teatro Nahual, moved to Los Angeles from Mexico City in 2001, she couldn't find any options for Spanish language theatre anywhere. The same thing…


Cado Dos Santos

Cado Dos Santos shares his Brazilian culture with the world through his world music

Ricardo "Cado" Dos Santos plays Brazilian music, but it's not the kind of Brazilian music you might be imagining. This is not bossa nova or samba; Cado's music is soulful, gentle, guitar-driven…


Elisa Marina Alvarado

Teatro Visión celebrates Chicano culture and identities through theater

San Jose's Teatro Visión is a 31-year-old Chicano theater company. Co-founder and Artistic Director Elisa Marina Alvarado explains, "We use that term because the Chicano movement,…


Jen Cole

Sharing, Building, Leading

What does the passion for local art look like on a national scale? What if the sharing economy valued sharing?          What can we do to connect people to resources that support their creative…


Juan Carlos Araujo

Empire Seven Studios breaks down the barriers to putting art on walls

Empire Seven Studios in San Jose started because Juan Carlos Araujo wanted his own art studio.   He envisioned the space at 525 N. 7th Street as his own personal art space, but…


Sam Rodriguez

Sam Rodriguez explores cultural hybridity and identity through a plurality of mediums

San Jose artist Sam Rodriguez doesn't fit neatly into any one particular category. You can't look at his body of work and say, "Oh, he's a graffiti muralist," or "Oh, he makes mixed-media pop art,"…


Romeo and Juliet

Valuing Artists, In All Senses of the Word

You may have read that the rise of the creative entrepreneur is leading to the death of the artist. That’s not our experience. We’ve had the pleasure of meeting and working with people in communities…


Pilar Agüero-Esparza

Pilar Agüero-Esparza is an artist, teacher, and mother who explores themes of labor and domesticity

It is natural for artists to continuously return back to recurring themes in their work throughout their career, and Pilar Agüero-Esparza is no exception. Agüero-Esparza is a visual artist based in…


Laura Zabel

Welcome to Creative Exchange (again)

"I believe in the magic of storytelling, not only for teller but also the listener," says agrarian artist Nikiko Masumoto, who lives and works in California's Central Valley. "The possibility of…


Nikiko Masumoto

Nikiko Masumoto cultivates connections between the art of food and farming and stories of place

Nikiko Masumoto is a farmer, and also an artist. Contrary what people might assume about these two different aspects of her life, they are not at odds with each other. In fact, each one informs the…


Yvonne Escalante

Of corn and men: Yvonne Escalante explores themes of social and environmental justice through corn

Corn: it's a rather pedestrian agricultural product. Chances are, you probably don't think too much about corn as you go about your daily life. You buy ears of corn for your summer barbecues. You…


Sarah Beth Nesbit

ZERO1 is where art and technology converge

ZERO1: The Art & Technology Network in San Jose is where art meets technology to shape the future. It is a nonprofit art and technology organization with the mission of providing a platform for…


Jai Tanju

A picture is worth a thousand words: Jai Tanju gives a personal touch to digital works

If you scroll through photographer Jai Tanju's tumblr page, you'll find exactly the kinds of images you would expect to see from someone who got his start in skateboarding photography: boards in…