Cultura Circular was a capacity-building programme for arts and culture festivals across Latin America and the Caribbean, delivered by Julie’s Bicycle with support from the British Council Americas. This case study highlights the work of Festival Internacional Madryn Escena Teatral (MET) in Argentina from the programme’s 2025-2026 cohort.
In culture, sustainability and climate change are no longer distant concepts but immediate realities. Across music, literature, and the performing arts, various events are showcasing innovative formats for community engagement and environmental awareness.
Drastic changes in ecosystems and extreme weather events increasingly resonate in daily conversations. What can be done in the face of this scenario? How can one overcome anxiety or discouragement? These questions are pressing, and the cultural sector offers a fertile field of action for those seeking answers.
Festivals, regardless of their discipline—be it music, performing arts, literature, or visual arts—and whether they take place in cities or rural areas, on a small or large scale, are fundamentally gathering points. Once a year, they serve to bring together people, traditions, customs, rituals, and emotions, driven by shared interests and, increasingly, by environmental awareness.
Festival Internacional MET – Madryn Escena Teatral
Held every January in Puerto Madryn, in Argentine Patagonia, MET – Madryn Escena Teatral has had five editions, with a programme that covers various expressions of the performing arts: puppets, circus, magic, murga, theatre, dance, and performance. Companies from France, Spain, Brazil, Chile, the United Kingdom, and Argentina have participated throughout its history.
Produced by the Teatro del Infinito group and the Fundación Cultural y Educativa del Infinito, the festival aims to democratise access to culture. For this reason, its activities are free of charge—or ‘a la gorra’ (by donation)—and take place in theatres, cultural centres, the pedestrian street, and the waterfront promenade, attracting children, young people, and adults. This edition featured more than 55 performances by 17 companies, bringing colour and diversity to the city.
The festival links art to the cleaning and conservation of beaches through the project “A clean sea is a happy whale,” which engages the community, tourists, and artists in collecting coastal waste. Performative interventions that integrate artistic language with environmental awareness are carried out along the route, as are collective actions to transform the collected materials. In addition, the arrangement of sound equipment and the decibel level are strictly regulated to avoid affecting the marine ecosystem.
The programming and activities before the festival integrate art and environmental awareness in a transversal way, through initiatives such as an inclusive workshop on constructing objects and masks from recycled materials, in which children create their works together with teachers and families. In addition to visual arts exhibitions such as “Poéticas Ecológicas. Tramas de un Territorio en Escena” (Ecological Poetics. Weavings of a Territory on Stage) with works by artists from the Patagonian region, or the recent “Reciclar para imaginar. Miradas que transforman. Del material descartado a la creación artística” (Recycle to imagine. Transforming perspectives. From discarded material to artistic creation).
The next challenge on the agenda is the cycle “El Mar en Juego” (The Sea at Play), a proposal developed in collaboration with the Municipality of Puerto Madryn’s Secretary of Ecology, which invites citizens to a series of talks and games to raise environmental awareness.
Across all its proposals and activities, MET focuses on nature, its care, and collective responsibility towards the socio-environmental surroundings.
It is wonderful to see how the community approaches and participates; theatre can be an excellent way to get to know the city, learn to care for the natural environment, and reflect on how to improve our quality of life, in addition to constituting a cultural attraction that complements the natural beauty of Madryn. People are surprised to find such complex and beautiful shows.
– Mario Morettini (The festival organiser)
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