Interview with George Cisneros from Urban-15

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Interview with George Cisneros from Urban-15

UTSA Coda podcast

Cheyanne Rhodes [00:00:01] Hi I'm here with George Cisneros. Correct? George Cisneros [00:00:07] And urban 15. Cheyanne Rhodes [00:00:08] Urban-15 and I'm going to have a few questions for the sake of my presentation. Can you say that general purpose and mission to urban 15. George Cisneros [00:00:18] Well you know urban 15 is dedicated to the spirit of creation and we do everything in our power to stimulate motivate cultivate creative energy in San Antonio. Cheyanne Rhodes [00:00:34] Okay. And what was the inspiration for starting Urban-15. George Cisneros [00:00:38] Well urban 15. The inspiration actually comes from the fact that we are working artists. The original 15 members of the group we're all working artists: dancers, choreographers, sculptors, musicians, composers, dramatic. So everybody was a creating producing working artist and we have kept that spirit alive. The fact that we have created an entity is because we feel that artists often working independently often get overlooked and they they just cannot get the power when groups of people come together. And we wanted to create a vehicle to promote creativity. Cheyanne Rhodes [00:01:35] All right. And can you speak a little bit on how urban 15 established itself in San Antonio and the process of basically getting started. George Cisneros [00:01:44] Well I am born and raised in San Antonio and for the first 18 years of my life except for short two and three month though excursions when I travel with my dad, Urban-15 is something that came from the fact that I'm here in San Antonio. And then when I went to college I noticed that much of the support structure for artists was not available and I just was very lucky and blessed to have a friends who were great creators and they felt that as a group we should get together and start doing productions. That was in Austin in the summer of, I guess was the summer of 74. And that's when we did our first productions and our first presentations. The group stayed active and eventually we moved to Houston, Texas and ironically many of the musicians and artists we worked with in Austin also had by that time moved to Houston. And then years later when we came back to San Antonio in nineteen eighty. Oh we just said let's just make this the headquarters and we reformed and incorporated with non-profit corporation status and urban 15 is here today. Cheyanne Rhodes [00:03:20] It sounds like it was a fun adventure. How do you stay funded as a nonprofit organization. George Cisneros [00:03:26] Well, we don't ever stay funded. It's always a matter of trying to work towards survival. The Arts in San Antonio, unless you're a legacy organization, you have to work all the time to to keep level. Much of our income is earned income from our performances or classes or workshops or tuition. And we basically have to to earn money through working as teachers and educators workshop presenter and performers. One of the things we'd like to do in the future is to develop urban 15 here at 2500 South Presa into a presenting organization. And that is we would have at the door ticket sales. We do a few things so far but oh the building is quite not ready to handle a full public audience and many of the arts groups in San Antonio, most of the arts groups in San Antonio in fact, they're not creators. They may do creative things but they're often using scripts that are you know from the anthology of plays or they do stuff that was produced in other venues. Most of the music performed by the big orchestras and chamber groups are not original. They are basically from off the score of the composer who may have died four or five hundred years ago. But there are a handful of organizations that actually are creating original work. And oh urban-15 has devoted itself to that and now we're seeing an opportunity and necessity to get in what they call presenting and there are organizations and San Antonio arts groups that only present works created and performed by other people. And then they basically provide the venue. So all of these things are in motion right now as urban 15 evolves from a performing creative group into perhaps an institution. Cheyanne Rhodes [00:05:55] OK. And just to be clear as far as the funding go there's no necessary like grant applications that urban 15 takes part in. George Cisneros [00:06:03] Yes we have a number of public sources and private sources to which we apply every year or every other year: some are two year cycles some a one year cycles. But we do receive money at both the local level, the state level, and frequently at a national level from the National Endowment for the Arts, then statewide from Humanities Texas the Texas Commission on the arts and then locally from the city of San Antonio and/or Bexar County. Cheyanne Rhodes [00:06:40] OK. And for you at least what is the best part to you about working for urban 15. George Cisneros [00:06:48] Well I think that the thing that keeps me wanting to come back to work every day is I never know who I'm going to meet that day or who's in a walk in the door with an idea or who has something exciting that they want to share. So for me it's the magic of many people just appearing out of nowhere. And we've had to learn how to work with that dynamic. What I have been concentrating on in most recent years has been wanting to work with seniors and special ed and children. And it's just something that I learn more from them than they learn for me. I love creating. Urban 15, it has allowed us to see parts of the community that would not normally surface if we weren't doing our work. Cheyanne Rhodes [00:07:52] OK. And do you have any personal artistic interests or experience beyond expanding urban 15 to be its on performance venue. George Cisneros [00:08:04] Well. As an individual artist I'm always active.I've tried my best to keep a little bit of time of the day or of the month so I can go back to do my own personal work. I do want to maintain that, you know, it's like any other skill. You have to maintain your chops, you have to maintain your skill sets. So when the organization takes over your life you could sort of lose the edge that made you one do you earn 15 to start out. And you have to keep as an individual artist your creative output at some definable and substantive level. You have to keep creating at a personal level. Cheyanne Rhodes [00:08:56] Right. All right. And in your own words why is art and music so important to the general population. Is there any particular group that you specifically feel benefits more or less than another. George Cisneros [00:09:11] All art is an expression of the community. Even the artist who is perhaps seemingly disengaged from a community. Their disengagement is actually a testimony of something it might be in the community that disengages people. An artist who is always engaged with communities, obviously the community has influenced them to the point where they want to be engaged with that community. It's a very symbiotic relationship that occurs for the artist and there are times when you can give more than receive more. And there are other times when you need to be more receptive than creating output. And this relationship then sets up a situation where anything you create is actually a reflection of the community. There's no way for me to change my DNA. There's no way for me to relate to something factually that I did not experience. If I'm not a first time witness or first layer witness or if I was not involved in something I really don't know if. I can interpret it but I can't necessarily know it. And so if I'm honest to myself and deal with knowledge and truth, it will reflect the community which raised me, the community in which I've lived. Or it may also point to the community in which I want to develop and make the future. So artists are both keepers of the of the stories and interpreting them and yet at the same time we can present a vision of the future. And I think that arts are far more in a leadership role than the rest of society sometimes gives credit. Cheyanne Rhodes [00:11:25] Okay. And I know that we talked about a little bit earlier but do you have any upcoming projects aside from expansion just any upcoming performances, events. George Cisneros [00:11:38] You know right now urban 15 is in that position of trying to transition from just our role as creator or performance organization to a presenting and perhaps even an encyclopedic concept. We have started several projects in the last few years that have to do with community memory. And many of them are using technology and the big project we're pursuing right now is called the hidden histories. And that is a monthly streaming cultural magazine that's available through the Internet and what we're trying to do is find stories and find artists and activities, events that normally have not been covered yet by the traditional media resources and in that way urban 15 can retain a very close contact with artists and families and organizations that have contributed to the community that have not been recognized. So we feel that we're playing a sort of cultural encyclopedia. We're working very hard to gather particularly in the literary community. We're working very hard to gather groupings of poets and to document their work. We have several projects a year that deal with poetry. But the important thing is for us, with the technology that we have available, we're trying our best to document and record the poets of our community. And we're going to be branching out to work now with choreographers and musicians because we feel that if we don't record it now, it's going to be lost. And in recent years we have lost so many wonderful artists and yet their work wasn't properly documented or recorded or kept in some kind of archive where it's available. I know artists who have passed. And their family doesn't know what to do with their stuff. There's books, there's slides, there's photographs, there's videos, that are not even about the artists, they're part of the collection. And the things we collect are often a good way of seeing who we are and what we respect. And so we find people in their closets, these incredible libraries of books and these videotape archives these C.D.s, what do we do with their stuff? It can be you know it was up to the family of course but there are things which are very precious to the arts community and we need to create spaces where things can be recorded and documented. And I see this now as part of the urban 15 mission is to make sure that the coming generations know what is being made today. Cheyanne Rhodes [00:15:17] That's beautiful and I completely agree with that. There are some things that just need to be preserved in our community which I think is very important. For San Antonio and just in general as artists pass unfortunately and time goes on I think there is a big shift coming in the art realm basically and the industry in general. But do you think there is anything the general community can do to further and help your mission as an organization or even that college students can do to contribute to urban 15. George Cisneros [00:15:54] Well one of the things that the community needs to be sensitive to is that much of San Antonio's arts community is emerging. They're learning their craft. They're learning their craft and perfecting skill sets. But they're not at the level of production for AT&T Center or the Tobin. So it is unfair for people to judge emerging artist with the standards that they put on the road shows in the big touring groups and the massive amount of technology and money that goes into supporting those presentations. And most local artists and dancers and poets and theater companies are working with extremely limited budgets and they have to charge ticket prices that are relative to the level of the sophistication. You know people are paying one hundred and twenty nine dollars, hundred and forty nine dollars, to see a show at AT&T Center. Yet they won't pay 15 dollars or twenty dollars to go see a show at jump start. So you know it's really hard for local artists to survive in that mix unless they're willing to relocate. And part of the relocation dilemma is once you get out there in the world, you don't come back. And that's one of the hardest things in the arts is how do we keep our artists here. And how do we keep them wanting and how do we keep them employed here. These are all big issues. And that's one of where things urban 15 has tried to do is how do we find money for those artists who are struggling on a day to day level with contract work or freelance work or the artists who are working at grocery stores and are so exhausted they come home and they can't do their art because they're tired. So creating a stable, sustainable artist community in San Antonio is hard work.It is something that needs to be addressed. I know that artists who work in the performing arts and who cater to the tourist industry you know they have, they can earn money. They can survive. But if you're working in the community. It's very hard to work for tips or split the gate. Cheyanne Rhodes [00:18:48] Yes. And do you feel that the arts are generally becoming overlooked or is it just a hard industry in general to kind of stay afloat in in today's society. George Cisneros [00:19:03] I think that the arts have a very vital role in today's society. It seems like the primary impetus is entertainment right now. But we are starting to see even the large mega stars are becoming more vocal in their political opinions and their social reactions. But it is hard to get that audience at a local level. It's hard to get an audience if your primary agenda based OR social action based. People want entertainment. And again how do you encourage people to put down their drink and listen to the music when so much of the arts is about the courting ritual. People go to a gallery opening or to a music venue or to somewhere for the social possibility that they'll meet someone they can fall in love with. And it's important that we have that ritual going on. But there are times when that is there and the art work is someplace else. I have been told that like when people go to art galleries the average time is somewhere between seven and nine seconds that a person will look at a painting at an art gallery and then they move on and you know in seven or nine seconds you know that that's not much for a guy who's been working on that painting for three years. So there's a lot of of those issues in the arts. Well right now we're starting to address the fact that people want instant gratification from the art. And that it needs to be right there in front of you. And then you take your nine seconds somewhere else and that's often not really possible. So again I want to ensure, and Katherine and I and all members of urban 15 want to ensure that there is a place for an intellectual and spiritual consciousness of things being creative that are not just entertainment based or tourist based. Cheyanne Rhodes [00:21:45] All right. And lastly how do you usually go about promoting your organization and its events so we can stay on the lookout. George Cisneros [00:21:54] Well, like political campaigns, the most expensive part of the arts industry is media time. And the big cost in political campaigns is buying TV and radio time, newspaper or magazine ads. And thats the same way with the arts. We have been kind of fortunate that many of us were, in the early days of the social media and electronic media world, of learning how to use hand-held cameras, learning how to do HTML, and learning how to use much of the new social media devices. And so we've been using, as much as possible, electronic communications for a way to to promote our events. It's fascinating this world that's going on right now where you get most of your information in your hand. And that's part of the reason why we chose to do that event called Mega Corazon which is a worldwide poetry festival that we broadcast from here at urban 15 but our idea is that if you could watch poetry in your hand, you know, it's not everywhere. So we're taking advantage of those technology tools. Again it's always a learning curve and you have to come to work every morning knowing that what you thought was going to happen may not happen because you may learn something totally different. Somebody may have walked in with some kind of device or some kind of system. Just a few days or weeks ago somebody came in they say why aren't you using Tik Tok. I'm saying "Another one" and they say "yep". I mean so the last few weeks I've been exploring ways to use Tik Tok. So you know it's always out there. The best thing is that Urban 15 has taken an old church, a place that's always a destination for people in need. And as a result of it we've been able to provide those needs of the creative community and the general community. But we're very proud of the work that we've done in our in our city we've been at it now for over 40 years and we want to continue for another generation or two. Cheyanne Rhodes [00:24:36] Yeah. I know Urban 15 has had a major role in the arts in San Antonio which I'm really grateful for the opportunity to be able to come out and interview you. And that was the last my questions. But thank you so much for your time and is there anything else you would want to say. George Cisneros [00:24:51] Well yes its that people shouldn't be afraid to create. There's always time in your life where something happens and you have a strong, emotional, almost physical reaction to it. You need to get it down. Whether it be a sketch, a poem, a melody, a gesture. But everything in life can be recorded as an art piece. And that's what I'd like to share with everybody. Cheyanne Rhodes [00:25:27] All right. Well thank you so much for your time. George Cisneros [00:25:30] OK.