Festival de las Calaveras: Twin Cities Dia de los Muertos Celebration

Festival de las Calaveras, Twin Cities Latinx Music + Arts Festival

About///
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. Tlalnepantla’s mission is to promote ancestral creativity through contemporary art forms that promote cultural identities and transform community. Goals///
The festival intends to promote the celebration of Day of the Dead within the Latinx community, embracing diverse intergenerational, educational, economic, cultural, and gender identities, further, considering that many may not practice the same tradition of ancestral remembrance, yet are invited to appreciate similarities rather than cultural differences as original peoples of the Americas. The festival also extends the opportunity to members of other cultural communities and allies to celebrate the remembrance of their own ancestors through Latinx artistic expression and the Day of the Dead tradition. Tlalnepantla Arts 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 engaged community with the creation of a Day of the Dead ofrenda (offering) on the same plot where the corn was planted and harvested.

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Festival de las Calaveras, Festival de Música + Arte Latinx de las Twin Cities

Acerca del Festival///
Festival de las Calaveras es un festival de música y artes Latinx producido por el grupo comunitario Artes Tlalnepantla. El festival se centra en la celebración tradicional y contemporánea del Día de los Muertos, una tradición indígena mexicana que honra la memoria de antepasados y seres queridos. Historia///
El Proyecto Zenteotl fue el componente de enlace comunitario de Tlalnepantla Arts desde 2009 hasta el 2017. El Proyecto Zenteotl fusionó arte, danza Mexica (azteca) y agricultura urbana dentro de un jardín comunitario en la vecindad de Central, Sur Minneapolis. En el 2013, se organizó el primer Festival de las Calaveras para dar a conocer el trabajo de jardinería comunitaria del Proyecto Zenteotl que se dedicaba a sembrar maíz azul orgánico y honrar la temporada de cultivo de maíz y la comunidad con la creación de una ofrenda para el Día de los Muertos en la misma parcela donde se había sembrado y cosechado maíz.