Akumal Arts Festival – 2019

Dear Akumal Family,

Who could have imagined the fantastic success of the first annual Akumal Arts Festival and Residency?????? Our number one goal was to #beautifyakumal. Who doesn’t love the murals and the good feelings they generate? There is no final tally for total murals painted as local and traveling artists still continue to drop in and paint, however by the end of the extended festival run 2018, there were 100 paintings by 100 artists. Over 60 art classes taught to the children and community of Akumal

We are flying forward on this magic carpet ride for November 8, 9, 10th, 2019, the second annual Akumal Arts Festival and Residency. The Open Call for Artists continues until June 1st. At least 40 of the 2018 artists have confirmed their return again this fall, some of whom will be volunteering on the production team. Attached is a fact sheet for both 2018 successes and for the 2019 event including pre-festival initiatives, more activities and contests.

Truthfully, the Akumal Arts Festival crew continues to cultivate many new relationships and possibilities to bring more art, arts education, conservation, community engagement – a creative plethora of ideas and inspiration. Jennifer facilitated the completion of a cooking classroom to promote a Healthy Lifestyle Education at the secondary school/high school. Funded by Festival donor Safari Family, kids are actively learning to prepare nutritious and healthy meals.

Akumal Beautiful and Clean is an initiative being launched with Iran Beltran and other pueblo leaders. As we plan for the 2nd Akumal Arts Festival and Residency there are many ideas for gathering recycling and reusable materials for art making. The Akumal school children installation will focus on this theme using materials gathered by community led waste-management practices.

To support the Akumal Arts Festival is to support the true development of Akumal into a place of art and arts education, community engagement, taking leadership for a Sustainable Akumal. Contributions by Akumal businesses, community members and property owners helping us house, feed and buy lots of paint are obviously part of the equation. Without the contributions of you and everyone in the Akumal community, we would not be able to make any of this possible. Thank you all!

For contributions to the 2019 Akumal Arts Festival we can accept cash, flight miles, in-kind donations. On our web page we have a Paypal donation button.       https://www.tortuga-escondida.com/festival-residency.

And a handy dandy GoFundMe campaign https://www.gofundme.com/akumal-arts-festival-2019

Cash donations, either USD or Pesos, can be dropped off at Turtle Bay Café.

Every penny/peso counts to help beautify and unify Akumal. Our goal is to establish the Akumal Arts Festival as a long term annual production as a basis for creating a tourist destination event. Are you with us?

Many thanks!

Jennifer, Marti, Jake, Erin, Rena

https://www.instagram.com/akumalartsfestival/

https://www.facebook.com/AkumalArtsFestival/