Inaugural San Antonio Festival Unites SJSU, City of San José and Local Businesses

The Paseo de San Antonio is a colorful walkway that winds along business storefronts in downtown San José between S. Fourth and S. Market Streets, culminating in the Plaza de César Chávez opposite the Spartan Village on the Paseo and the Tech Interactive. The paseo serves as a physical connector between San José State and the city of San José, offering restaurants, bars, theaters and a variety of pop-up businesses that might pique a Spartan's imagination.

And on Saturday, November 23, the Paseo de San Antonio between S. Fourth and S. Third Streets will be transformed into the San Antonio Festival . The event, dreamed up by San José State Assistant Professor of Advertising Belén Moreno, is the result of her partnerships with the San José Downtown Association, the arts nonprofit Local Color, the City of San José and the pop-up small business incubator Moment.

Supported by an Artistic Excellence Programming Grantfrom College of Humanities and the Arts, the festival includes art installations, live performances and community workshops developed by four local businesses located on the Paseo (Sueños, Plant Slut, Bad Witch CrystalsandRosies and Posies), and free entrepreneurship and communications workshops for local businesses at the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library. In addition to a DJ, the bands House of Inanna and Caporales San Simón Cochabamba will perform live.

"My main goal is to create a sense of belonging," says Moreno, who noticed empty storefronts along the paseo after the COVID-19 pandemic and felt compelled to generate positive activity near campus. "This is an event created by the community, for the community. The pop-up market will feature local vendors and performances by local cultural groups. Local Color, a local arts organization, will have an installation. The festival will be fun, but I also intend to promote belonging in downtown San José and specifically on the paseo. We need to revitalize this area and attract more businesses."

An expert in creating branded content experiences, Moreno has assigned her Advertising 123 students various roles to bring the festival to life. Students have designed logos and promotional materials for the festival and researched potential media buys to spread the word. This hands-on learning experience is good practice for Spartans who want to work as account managers or creatives at advertising agencies.

There were more than 70 vacant storefronts in May 2023, according to the San José Downtown Association via a San José Spotlight report. Moreno shares thata significant number of these empty storefronts are located in the Paseo de San Antonio.That's why the festival includes the free entrepreneurship workshop at the library:; to encourage small businesses to return downtown.

Nicole Cailles, '25 Advertising, serves as Moreno's student assistant and is working hard to promote the festival.

"The most important skill that I've learned in my advertising journey is researching and understanding your client and what their business represents," she says. "Creating content through Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator can be easy, but without knowing your client, the content that's created won't have any correlation to who they are. This is the biggest project I have been a part of. I've learned so many things along the way, it's a great first step towards the direction I'm heading towards after college."

The San Antonio Festival is also strategically timed the weekend before Thanksgiving, when many businesses gear up for holiday sales and promotions, and also before Christmas in the Park activities overtake downtown San José. The event also represents the culmination of a semester's hard work, says Cailles.

"I am looking forward to seeing everything that Belén, our collaborators, and I created come to life," she adds. "I am also excited to watch the community come together on a bright and eventful day."

Get the details about the San Antonio Festival.

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