About

Encourage, support, and promote the arts for the benefit and education of the communities of the Lower Rio Grande Valley.

* Communities deserve the opportunity to participate in and enjoy the arts in all their forms.

* Visual artists, literary artists, and performing artists are part of a community of artists who should work together to support and advance their arts.

* Art brings people together to celebrate beauty, to make and create meaning, and to honor their shared past and present cultural heritage.

* Art education supports successful student learning.

* Art provides a life-long way for individuals to express their creativity, sense of beauty, emotions, and insights.

* A thriving arts culture helps to build community.

* A thriving arts culture provides economic benefits to the communities in which it exists.

Goal Statement #1: Organizational Development: Become a respected, recognized arts organization.

Goal Statement #2: Education: Promote understanding and appreciation of the arts.

Goal Statement #3: Promotion: Develop a climate that supports arts production and a center to showcase the arts.

Goal Statement #4: Communication Resource: Serve as a communication link for the arts.

Goal Statement #5: Advocacy: Serve as an advocacy group for the arts in the Lower Rio Grande Valley.

In the spring of 2005, a creative breeze blew across the Laguna Madre and sparked the imagination of local artists on the Island and mainland. As artists tend to collaborate, it was only natural that the two groups should join together to create a bay area foundation to support all the arts, to improve the quality of life and to grow the area as an arts destination in support of the tourism based economy.

With a small grant from the Community Foundation, El Paseo scheduled its first event. The plan was to think big but start small with a project that would be a success to build on. While some people doubted there was an audience for fine arts, the 200 tickets for the play sold out well in advance. One local paper ran an editorial before the show saying that the fledgling arts group “filled an obvious gap in the local art and entertainment scene… (providing)…proof of the pent up demand for performing arts in the Laguna Madre area.”

This first small production earned money to underwrite events for the initial season, including a small educational outreach program. For the first years, the Foundation relied heavily on talented artists from UTB and area groups in Valley cities. We ran on a very tight budget, with some in-kind services support.

In 2008, we began to plan on a larger scale and initiated a formal sponsorship program. We also took on the challenges of raising the performance fees of $30,000 for each of the American Wind Symphony’s two visits and the $20,000 performance fee to host the Valley Symphony Orchestra. We began to grow our local community theatre group.

El Paseo’s success helped spark the development of two art co-ops, one on the Island, and one in Port Isabel. El Paseo is a member of the Port Isabel co-op, and after an initial donation to the co-op on the Island, Art Space, El Paseo continues to support their work with scholarships for their student art camps as part of our educational outreach program. El Paseo also hosted the first concert for the new choral group, The Valley Voices, and we publicize their concerts as well as all the literary arts events at the local bookstore.

All of these local arts groups support one another and work toward the same goal: to build an arts destination. Indeed, El Paseo’s carefully collected audience profile data demonstrates that the arts do help support our tourism-based economy. For the last few years 50 to 55% of our audience members have been tourists.

El Paseo’s programs continue to grow in numbers and quality thanks to our strong sponsorship and membership bases. We are reaching far outside the area for ever higher-quality and more expensive professional programs. Our local community theatre group has also blossomed with the addition of new and more diverse thespians and backstage volunteers each year.

We, now, typically produce 8-12 major performing arts events plus our educational programming. We have expanded our marketing efforts to make extensive use of power of social media.

We have always been something of a “gypsy Foundation”, with no office space of our own, and we are even more of a “gypsy troop of players” with rehearsals in one place, set construction in another, storage of our growing inventory in four rented storage areas, and our major performances in the convention center theatre conference room. It’s never been easy, but lots of dedicated volunteers with a passion for the arts get it done. There is growing community support for an arts center, and we hope to see that part of our dream realized.