Be A Part Of The Akumal Arts Festival

Conceived as a community-based and global initiative, the festival's vision is to bring a fiesta of art to Akumal Pueblo through an international consortium. Guest artists make art while engaging the community, enhancing and beautifying the town for locals and Akumal's visitors. The entire festival staff and artists are volunteers- nobody profits monetarily from the festival. This is a labor of love for Akumal and its community. When conceived, the idea for the festival was to help improve the appearance of the Akumal, give the children an opportunity to experience art in the schools, and celebrate the fabulous culture of Mexico through nighttime activities.

The Art Festival has painted more than 380 murals over the past few years, taught hundreds of art classes, and has provided full scholarships for children of Akumal to attend University.  During quarantine, the organization created a soup kitchen at the Community Center and a food bank at the Hekabbe Library and Activity Center. It also renovated the Hekabbe Library Activity Center, built a sports center in the community center for the Taekwondo Program (which has 150 kids participating weekly). In addition, the program is currently building an interactive play water fountain park behind the police station, building a cooking classroom in the middle school and high school to teach cooking.

Festival organizers had housing for over 80 of the artists at Tortuga Escondida's Jungle Building in Rancho San Martin which was built to house scientists and artists that come to Akumal for ecological studies and contribute their artistic gifts to our community.  Housing the majority of the artists was to be one of the many festival organizers' contributions to Akumal. Unfortunately, the first week of October the entire development of Rancho San Martin was disconnected from CFE power. Organizers have been working frantically to restore power over the past 2 1/2 months but are not confident that they will have it restored in time. 

All this would not be possible for the fabulous support of the Community. Akumal has suffered greatly these past few years with overwhelming sargasso and the Covid quarantine. Today, the Akumal Fest is in desperate need of housing for the Artists who all pay their own way here and donate their time to beautify our community. If you have a bed, an extra room, or an available unit it would be greatly appreciated. The festival organizers are looking for housing from Jan 24-31. Even if you don't have availability for the entire period, artists are flexible on dates as some are coming in earlier or later- even the week before as production staff is coming in to help out. If you are unable to provide housing you can also help with financial support to buy the materials and supplies that are needed to produce the Festival.