As an educator, Tricia Creason-Valencia works to empower young people’s creative drive. In her classroom she often asks two questions together. First, “How many of you have a background in photography?” Most, if not all, stay silent, shaking their heads. She follows up with, “How many of you use Instagram?”
At this point, all hands raise. Creason-Valencia has shifted their perspective — art exists everywhere and they can be artists in their own way, even if they don’t realize it.
This concept embodies the goal of the South Bay’s We Create 408 challenge. Returning for its eighth year, the project poses weekly challenges to bring creativity into participants’ everyday activities.
“We’re asking regular everyday people to tap into the ways that they’re creative,” Creason-Valencia tells KQED. “We’re giving them a container for doing that.”
The filmmaker and educator is one of San José’s 2026 Creative Ambassadors. Using mediums like photography, videography, audio storytelling and poetry, Creason-Valencia has hosted workshops, conferences and has taught at various universities and high schools across the Bay Area. Her work focuses on personal identity through the exploration of art, which makes her a perfect spokesperson for We Create 408.
A coalition composed of San José’s arts and culture leaders and institutions worked together on this year’s challenge. Four themes unfold across each week in April: play, San José love, nurture, and nature. The challenge is also timed for California’s Arts, Culture and Creativity Month.
Participants are encouraged to submit their work via email, or by using the #WeCreate408 hashtag on social media to be part of the project website’s wall of creativity and enter a chance to win prizes from the city.
“This is really a coalition-driven campaign,” says Danielle Siembieda, senior program manager for the San José Office of Development and Economic Affairs. “Everybody has pitched in and given tickets, swag bags, artist prints and gift cards to the campaign to make those incentives, but also to get people out about and really being able to support our local creative economy.”
A supplementary curriculum is also provided by the coalition, detailing lesson plans for pre-K through fifth grade educators.
For the first week of April, “Take a Play Walk,” had participants looking for everyday, “hidden” works of art around the South Bay. They either had to sketch the shapes, grab photos or images, or write a three-sentence “found poem” about their discoveries.
Longtime San José resident Judy Rookstool has been participating in the challenge since 2021 and was the first to submit a poem.
Her main medium is acrylic paint, but for the first week, she decided to write instead, to challenge herself. Trying something in a new direction is something she’s familiar with, as an artist who started practicing “late in life.”
“We Create 408 is a way to break the ice,” Rookstool says. “There’s no threat. For example, the creativity wall doesn’t even attach names to the submissions. So, you have a chance to get your work out there in a very non-threatening way.”
According to Siembieda, the challenge has grown “exponentially” since its first iteration in 2019. San José was one of five cities in a 2017 study about how communities interact with their arts and cultural sectors. Led by the Metropolitan Group for the National Endowment for the Arts and Americans for the Arts, the study found that people crave the community that comes with creative expression.
A new addition this year are the weekly meetups at Voyager Craft Coffee’s St. John location, hosted by The Pal Community. The free events welcome participants who want to work on the challenges together. We Create 408 continues to expand beyond its starting point as a virtual community.
This challenge acts as a jumping-off point, and Creason-Valencia urges people to look at their daily life to see how creativity contributes to it, whether it’s posting photos on Instagram, cooking a meal, creating a new playlist, or even just singing in the shower.
“Give yourself credit for all the ways that you are a creative person,” she says. “You may not define yourself as an artist. You probably don’t, if you’re just a regular community member. But yet, you are doing these creative activities day in and day out. Just shift your mindset to see what you’re already doing.”
We Create 408 runs through April 30, 2026.
