(Seguin) – A vision to preserve some of the untold stories of Seguin and its people is now one day closer to becoming a reality thanks to a prestigious $50,000 national grant. Teatro De Artes De Juan Seguin is celebrating its announcement of a $50,000 Our Town award from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). The award will support Our Town-Sharing of People, Places, Culture, and Stories through Art Creation in Seguin.
Teatro Executive Director Dr. Yvonne De La Rosa says the award is one of 57 grants nationwide, totaling $4.1 million in funds that the NEA has approved in the Our Town category.
The category supports projects integrating arts, culture, and design activities into local efforts to strengthen and authentically engage communities, center equity, advance artful lives, and lay the groundwork for long-term systems change.
De La Rosa says their breath was taken away when learning that Teatro had been selected for the very competitive grant. She says Seguin was also only one of three cities in the state to receive funding from the NEA.
She says they are especially excited to engage the community in conversations that will gather and share the stories of Seguin’s communities and, in turn, will provide an avenue to create art projects that mirror the ethnicities in this community.
“We wanted to make sure that all of the stories of all of our communities were told. That included the Mexican-American community, the Tejanos that were here, the African-American community, as well as our indigenous brothers and sisters. That was something that I thought was very important because in our textbooks and also in what we teach our children, not all of that is always spoken even though we know that it was here. At Teatro, we’ve been told for 40 years, for many years, about the history of our area, and all of the time that our history was not being told to us per se from our textbooks and maybe even from some of our teachers. But it was important for us to make sure that all of the people of this area were represented. So with this $50,000 grant, we are going to create through a community arts creation the telling of stories of all of the people here in Seguin,” said De La Rosa.
De La Rosa says news of the grant was received following the recent death of her Mother, Vickie De La Rosa, one of the co-founders of the Teatro non-profit organization. Despite the competitiveness of this national grant, she says her mother was adamant that the group would be receiving this funding. She says connecting the community, even more, has always been the idea behind this effort — and it’s now part of the legacy that her mom leaves behind.
“This is actually the last grant I wrote with my mom and so when we sat down, we had this conversation about what did it look like and for me, it was a traveling exhibit to where it can move from location to location. This means it can move into the school. It can move into the bank. It can move into a public space so this is very valuable. This art creation is very valuable and so that it can travel throughout our city to tell the stories of the different people of Seguin,” said De La Rosa.
De La Rosa says Teatro looks forward to working together with Seguin citizens in documenting the town’s cumulative history, which thanks to this traveling exhibit, will not only be shared locally and nationally but internationally as well.
“This includes three different paintings and/or mix media art forms, that will all come to fruition because it is a community project. This is something that we are going to reach out into the community for them to come and have sit downs with us and the artist, talk about the history of our town, bring in artifacts that the artist can look at and can tell a story about maybe that artifact that will then help the artist to create this community procreation of art,” said De La Rosa.
In completing this project, Teatro will partner with the city of Seguin, Seguin Mainstreet, and the Seguin Public Library.
“This is an amazing accomplishment and well deserved! Teatro is a very important part of our community and this NEA Our Town grant will certainly be put to the best use,” said Seguin Mayor Donna Dodgen.
Teatro, again, looks forward to actively engaging with the community through community plastics (conversations) to capture these stories that will be at the center of the artist residency community co-creation of art. Opportunities for those conversations will be announced as soon as they are scheduled.
These art creations are set to be unveiled one by one throughout 2024-2025.