Festival de las Calaveras

Tlalnepantla Arts presents

7th Annual Festival de las Calaveras: Twin Cities Latinx Music & Arts Festival

About the Festival

Festival de las Calaveras is a Latinx music and arts festival volunteer-organized by non-profit community group Tlalnepantla Arts. The festival is centered on the traditional and contemporary celebration of Day of the Dead, an indigenous Mexican tradition which honors the memory of ancestors and departed loved ones.

Festival de las Calaveras is composed of a series of events that take place annually in the fall and include live music, dance performance, puppet theater, visual arts exhibition, multimedia animation, spoken word, and family art-making activities. Festival events take place at leading Twin Cities’ venues, claiming and creating space for Latinx arts, artists, and community.

Objectives

Festival de las Calaveras addresses limited resources and support for high quality annually produced Latinx arts showcases in Minnesota. Guiding principles for the festival are to build community through Latinx arts; connect and grow the Twin Cities diverse Latinx arts community; recognize and expose local Latinx artists to the Latinx and broader Twin Cities audiences; and promote artistic collaborations among local, national, and international Latinx artists.

History

The Zenteotl Project was the community engagement component of Tlalnepantla Arts from 2009 to 2017. The Zenteotl Project fused art, Mexica (Aztec) dance, and urban agriculture within a community garden in Central Neighborhood, South Minneapolis. In 2013, the first Festival de las Calaveras was organized to bring awareness to the Zenteotl Project’s community gardening work that was dedicated to planting organic blue corn and engaging community with the creation of a Day of the Dead ofrenda (offering) on the same plot where the corn was planted and harvested.

Participation and Attendance

The 2013 and 2014 festivals featured over 50 artists, of whom 87% were Latinx. The 2015 festival featured 60 artists, of whom 90% were Latinx. The 2016 festival featured 83 artists, of whom 95% were Latinx, representing multiple artistic genres. The 2017 festival featured 238 artists, of whom 95% were Latinx, with an approximate attendance of 1,348 community members throughout seven events. The 2018 festival featured 143 artists, of whom 87% were Latinx, with an approximate attendance of 2,435 community members throughout six events.

Festival 2019 Program

Family Art Day / Saturday, October 26, 12-3 pm / CLUES, 797 7th St E, St Paul

Dia de los Muertos Concert / Saturday, November 2, 7 pm - 1 am / La Doña Cervecería, 241 Fremont Ave N, Minneapolis

All donations support essential festival production expenses and groundwork for the upcoming festival in 2020.

Connect

www.festivalcalaveras.com

Facebook: @festivaldelascalaveras

Instagram: festivalcalaverastc

Email: festivalcalaveras13@gmail.com

PH: 612-48-MAIZ-3

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Tlazohkamati | Thank you | Muchas Gracias!