Chris Castillo Interview, Spare Parts SA (IA chris-castillo-interview)
28:13 · Fæ · 2020-08-22
Interview Transcript Adam Garza [00:00:00] Hi, my name's Adam Garza, in the intro to Music and Arts Nonprofits class at UTSA, and this is in fulfillment for an assignment to record an artist involved with nonprofit work. Adam [00:00:20] And with me today is Chris Castillo. Chris Castillo [00:00:27] And I am primarily a visual artist and I have had experience working in the nonprofit sector for a decade and I currently am a teen librarian for the San Antonio Public Library System. Happy to be here. Thank you for having me, Adam. Adam [00:00:44] Thank you for joining me, Chris. Now, currently, what nonprofits are you active in? Chris [00:00:51] So currently, I'm in I'm active in a nonprofit organization called Spare Parts. The mission of spare parts is to advance creative re-use through the arts. What that means is that we promote sustainability, re-use, recycling, upcycling, being creative with the waste that we produce as consumers and businesses. And we also work directly with educators and artists who might not have access to all of the resources that they need. And I've been involved with this nonprofit ever since it was founded. So I started as a volunteer and worked my way through as a board member where I currently am serving. So that's my role, I'm one of the board members for Spre and we'll get into what that means and how that looks. That is the current nonprofit that I am working with. Adam [00:02:10] And can you tell you what drew you to them since you started as a volunteer, how you found Spare Parts? Chris [00:02:18] That is a great question. You know, just within my own network of people in the San Antonio art community, there are people that have passion projects and are really passionate and driven to be the change that they want to see in the world, as cheesy as that sounds. And my friend Mary Cantu, I met her while I was working, I met her when I was interning at Art Pace, an artist residency. I became interested in working with Spare Parts when it was founded just through the network of community here in San Antonio. I started interning at a nonprofit arts organization called Art Pace and that's where I met Mary Cantu and Mary is the founder of Spare Parts. It was just a genius idea where in Mary and volunteers and businesses would all come together for a common goal of reducing trash. You know, one of the motto that the organization uses often is trash is failure of the imagination. And what that means is an organization like Spare Parts connects businesses and individuals that have extra things and connects that with people that need those things, be them artists or educators, especially educators who might not have the budget or the resources necessary to have art supplies for hundreds of students in their district or what have you. So not nonprofit... [inaudible] There are passion projects that people will create. They don't always end up being a nonprofit and honestly, spare parts did not start as a nonprofit. It started as an idea. And that idea grew; that idea grew and became a nonprofit. We have a board and an executive director. We have different titles and responsibilities. We have bylaws. We we did all of the paperwork that was necessary to become a registered nonprofit with the Internal Revenue Service. Many hours, lots of dedicated people and I guess I- I want to say: for anybody that might be interested in starting a nonprofit, just start. You might not have everything you need at the start, but just start. Adam [00:05:52] You mentioned that you have, everybody has, their roles in the positions and whatnot. What is yours and what do you do? Chris [00:06:00] So my role on the board of spare parts has changed over time. Initially, one of the programing features of spare parts is a program called Mini Art Museum. And the Mini Art Museum is a traveling art museum. It features real contemporary artists whose works can be found in collections of museums, contemporary art collections, the Mini Art Museum as a collecting institution. And, initially, my role on the board was as a committee member for the Mini Art Museum, and the structure of our board has changed. And now I'm just on the regular board of spare parts. There are around nine of us and we each have different- we each bring different things to the table where, I've worked in a nonprofit arts organization and I had worked there for 10 years and made lots of contacts in the artist community here in San Antonio and I'm able to be kind of a connector for people and for things to come to fruition, so I think that's kind of my role in the board. But, in addition to that, we're also responsible for fundraising and for steering the organization at a higher level, not bogged down on the day to day operations. That's what our executive director and our staff do. But at the higher level, where do we want to see that organization grow and who are the city leaders and business people that we need to be in touch with to help sponsor an