Festival Somos Mar (FSM) in Spanish, or We are the Sea Festival in English, is our weeklong participatory audiovisual and creative arts festival that tours public schools in small-scale fishing villages along Perú's coastline. Through photography, stop-motion animation, and mural workshops, teacher trainings, and interactive classes, our team of artists, scientists, journalists, and ocean athletes engage young learners and educators in investigating, imaging, and immersing themselves in their exploration of marine-human health, natural-cultural heritage, social-ecological well-being, sustainable fisheries, and epic futures.
Just like every good story, our festival centers around...
SpACEs
We collaborate with public education institutions and community groups in rural fishing villages.
Characters
We engage students, teachers, parents, and the broader community through intergenerational learning.
ACtions
We facilitate project-based and place-responsive learning centered on science, technology, art, and justice.
Mural + Art
Workshops
Photography
Workshops
AI Rural
Innovation
Animation Workshops
SUrf + Swim
Sessions
Upcoming + Previous Editions
2025
Can you guess where we’re headed this year? We’re deep in logistics planning mode for our next adventure and can’t wait to share what we're up to with some epic partners. One thing’s for sure — Festival Somos Mar 2025 will bring even more youth, educators, and communities together to celebrate storytelling, coastal culture, and the magic of a very underappreciated marine ecosystem...
Stay tuned — We’ll announce our next location soon! Coming November 2025!
2024
In 2024, Coast 2 Coast partnered with the Nature Conservancy and SERNANP (Servicio Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas por el Estado) — the governing body responsible for conserving Peru’s Protected Natural Areas, safeguarding their biodiversity, and ensuring these areas continue to provide vital environmental services through participatory, sustainable management.
We brought Festival Somos Mar to Ancón, a fishing community two hours outside Lima (depending on the traffic) that experienced one of the worst oil spills in Peruvian history. We joined our friends, Conciencia Marina, a local nonprofit working with the Ancón community on sustainable fisheries and marine conservation, to produce a series of photography workshops, murals, and a stop-motion animation with local students. The festival's purpose was to build relationships between students and La Reserva Nacional Sistema de Islas, Islotes y Puntas Guaneras (RNSIIPG)with the local natural protected area near the Ancón fishing village.
2023
In 2023, Coast 2 Coast received a grant from the U.S. Embassy in Peru, and Festival Somos Mar traveled back up the Northern Coast and along rivers weaving through the Peruvian Amazon and Andes. We collaborated with young learners and rural educators in coastal and inland small-scale fishing villages and Indigenous communities, adding a new stop to our route: Puerto Malabrigo, also known as Chicama, home to the longest left-breaking wave in the world.
Throughout this journey, we focused our participatory audiovisual workshops on El Niño—a natural climate event intensified by climate change that occurs in the tropical Pacific Ocean. Characterized by unusually warm ocean temperatures, El Niño can have significant effects on weather patterns around the world, sometimes bringing much-needed rainfall but also leading to hazards like flooding and landslides.
Through these workshops, local youth explored the impacts of El Niño on their communities and daily lives while building skills to share their stories through film and photography. Follow our Instagram for highlights from this journey and glimpses of how young people are using their voices, creativity, and place-based knowledge to imagine resilient futures.
In 2023, Coast 2 Coast received a grant from the U.S. Embassy in Peru, and Festival Somos Mar traveled back up the Northern Coast and along rivers weaving through the Peruvian Amazon and Andes. We collaborated with young learners and rural educators in coastal and inland small-scale fishing villages and Indigenous communities, adding a new stop to our route: Puerto Malabrigo, also known as Chicama, home to the longest left-breaking wave in the world.
Throughout this journey, we focused our participatory audiovisual workshops on El Niño—a natural climate event intensified by climate change that occurs in the tropical Pacific Ocean. Characterized by unusually warm ocean temperatures, El Niño can have significant effects on weather patterns around the world, sometimes bringing much-needed rainfall but also leading to hazards like flooding and landslides.
Through these workshops, local youth explored the impacts of El Niño on their communities and daily lives while building skills to share their stories through film and photography. Follow our Instagram for highlights from this journey and glimpses of how young people are using their voices, creativity, and place-based knowledge to imagine resilient futures.
In 2023, Coast 2 Coast received a grant from the U.S. Embassy in Peru, and Festival Somos Mar traveled back up the Northern Coast. We collaborated with young learners and rural educators, returning to Los Órganos and El Ñuro while adding a new stop to our route: Puerto Malabrigo, also known as Chicama, home to the longest left-breaking wave in the world.
Throughout this journey, we focused our participatory audiovisual workshops on El Niño—a natural climate event intensified by climate change that occurs in the tropical Pacific Ocean. Characterized by unusually warm ocean temperatures, El Niño can have significant effects on weather patterns around the world, sometimes bringing much-needed rainfall but also leading to hazards like flooding and landslides.
Through these workshops, local youth explored the impacts of El Niño on their communities and daily lives while building skills to share their stories through film and photography. Follow our Instagram for highlights from this journey and glimpses of how young people are using their voices, creativity, and place-based knowledge to imagine resilient futures.
Later in the year, we were honored to collaborate with The Nature Conservancy Peru and SERNANP (Servicio Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas por el Estado) — the governing body responsible for conserving Peru’s Protected Natural Areas, safeguarding their biodiversity, and ensuring these areas continue to provide vital environmental services through participatory, sustainable management.
The purpose of this special edition of Festival Somos Mar was to engage youth living near protected areas in imagining and sharing their visions for how these places should be cared for and managed. Through storytelling, workshops, and creative activities, we opened up conversations about new career pathways — from marine biologist to environmental lawyer — and encouraged young people to see themselves as stewards and decision-makers for the future of these extraordinary places. Above all, the festival fostered meaningful relationships between youth, their communities, and the ecosystems they depend on, planting seeds for lasting care and connection.
2022
During the 2022 International Year of Artisanal Fisheries and Aquaculture, Coast 2 Coast worked with the Lighthouse Foundation and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations to co-create a curriculum framed by the Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries
in the Context of Food Security and Poverty Eradication. The SSF Guidelines are the first international instrument dedicated to protecting the human rights of people engaged in artisanal or otherwise small-scale fishing practices and activities. Coast 2 Coast worked with young learners and educators in Peru and virtually with classrooms in Madagascar, India, and Nigeria to co-produce the lesson plans and enrichment activities, exploring the guidelines as reflected in students’ realities. Festival Somos Mar in 2022 served as the curriculum’s pilot.
Our epic team engaged young learners and educators in public schools rooted in Negritos, Talara, Lobitos, El Ñuro, and Los Órganos. A team of scientists, educators, and artists worked with local teachers to facilitate select lesson plans with students. We also facilitated teacher training by pitching curriculum ideas and receiving their feedback. The pilots realized three stop-motion animations, two murals, ten photography series, and several artistic productions like cyanotype prints, protest signs, letters to policymakers, community maps, and more. Coast 2 Coast also facilitated workshops for adult learners like women involved in post-processing work and local stakeholders, including municipality officials.
Virtual pilots took place within the student focus groups in Peru, India, Madagascar, and Nigeria. As part of the virtual pilots, Coast 2 Coast also piloted the design of a regional photography contest engaging students and teachers in public schools along Peru's northern coast and inland fishing communities in the Piura region.
2021
Due to the pandemic, we adapted Festival Somos Mar to include distance-learning co-creation workshops in mural, photography, animation, and virtual classes with 922 students. Fortunately, we were also able to work in person with 24 students in various workshops following strict health and safety protocols.
2019
Our inaugural participatory media arts festival for ocean health and community wellbeing toured five local schools in historically marginalized fishing villages along Peru’s northern coast, where 70% of the country’s marine biodiversity is located and the largest concentration of oil exploitation operations. Our multidisciplinary team will facilitate audiovisual workshops, teacher training, and an ocean wealth community mapping initiative to establish a dialogue and information exchanges. Our immediate goal is to engage local youth in a playful way that genuinely fosters self-trust, cultural values, and marine stewardship for their coastal communities' sustainable futures.
Discover our
Chicama
Students from I.E. Jose Andres Razuri, the local public school in Puerto Malabrigo, teamed up with archaeologists from the University of California San Diego and Universidad de Trujillo to create an incredible stop-motion animation. This fun and engaging animation showcases the fascinating cultures that once lived in Chicama, thousands of years ago. Students dug alongside archaeologists and learned how their ancestors dealt with past El Niños. The talented students worked hand in hand with the archaeologists to bring this ancient world to life. They used colorful clay figures and exciting animation techniques to tell the story of the people who lived in Chicama long ago. But their animation isn't just for entertainment — it carries an important message too.
The students convey the importance of protecting our natural-cultural heritage. They show us how tomb raiding can harm these precious treasures and how we can all play a role in preserving them for future generations. Through their creativity and passion, these incredible students inspire us to appreciate and value the wonders of our past. Their stop-motion animation is not only entertaining but also a powerful reminder of the importance of protecting our history and the incredible cultures that shaped our world.
El Ñuro
In a heartwarming project, young learners from El Ñuro's local public school created a captivating stop-motion animation. Their story revolves around a white puma deeply in love with the ocean. However, their narrative goes beyond romance as they use their animation to shed light on the environmental changes occurring in their surroundings. Specifically, they showcase the consequences of warm water buildup in the tropical Pacific west of South America, including heavy rains, flooding, and other transformations due to El Niño. Through their creative work, these young students aim to celebrate the positives of the natural El Niño events. Their animation serves as an enchanting tool to inspire viewers to reflect on non-human lives and interactions.
To be continued...
We are currently on the road to producing more festivals along Peru's northern coast and deep within the Amazon and Andes. Stay tuned for more content coming soon!
2022
During the 2022 International Year of Artisanal Fisheries and Aquaculture, Coast 2 Coast worked with the Lighthouse Foundation and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations to co-create a curriculum framed by the Small-Scale Fisheries Guidelines. The SSF Guidelines are the first international instrument dedicated to protecting the human rights of people engaged in artisanal or otherwise small-scale fishing practices and activities. Coast 2 Coast worked with young learners and educators in Peru and virtually with classrooms in Madagascar, India, and Nigeria to co-produce the lesson plans and enrichment activities, exploring the guidelines as reflected in students’ realities. Festival Somos Mar in 2022 served as the curriculum’s pilot.
Our epic team engaged young learners and educators in public schools rooted in Negritos, Talara, Lobitos, El Ñuro, and Los Órganos. A team of scientists, educators, and artists worked with local teachers to facilitate select lesson plans with students. We also facilitated teacher training by pitching curriculum ideas and receiving their feedback. The pilots realized three stop-motion animations, two murals, ten photography series, and several artistic productions like cyanotype prints, protest signs, letters to policymakers, community maps, and more. Coast 2 Coast also facilitated workshops for adult learners like women involved in post-processing work and local stakeholders, including municipality officials.
Virtual pilots took place within the student focus groups in Peru, India, Madagascar, and Nigeria. As part of the virtual pilots, Coast 2 Coast also piloted the design of a regional photography contest engaging students and teachers in public schools along Peru's northern coast and inland fishing communities in the Piura region.
We are seeking collaborations with educators from SSF communities worldwide to work with us by reviewing the curriculum.
Los Órganos
Students from I.E. Salazar Bondy, the local public school in Los Órganos, created a stop-motion animation exploring the relationship between local legends and tenure, how stories may be intangible evidence of an SSF community's relationship with the spaces and resources over time. This piloted activity became Enrichment Activity 5.3: Time as Tenure in the curriculum.
Young Learners also painted murals illustrating their ocean's rich biodiversity while noting legal regulations for sustainable resource use. This was transformed into Enrichment Activity 5.4: The Beauty of Biodiversity - Mural Mosiacs, where students draw pictures of their favorite aquatic non-humans with any management rules they uncover for safeguarding them.
El Ñuro
Students in El Ñuro piloted a lesson plan to illuminate the characters facilitating a fish's journey from ocean to plate along the supply and value chain. This activity was integrated into Core Lesson 7: Following the Fishes' Mapping' Labor, Geography, and Value Post-Harvest.
Students also in El Ñuro painted a mural of a woman in fisheries' hands, complimenting those of a fisherman on a mural realized during FSM 2021. The two murals together represent gender equity in fisheries from the net to the pot, celebrating the vital role of women in SSF as described in Chapter 8: Gender Equality in the SSF Guidelines.
+ Lobitos, Talara, Negritos
We also engaged teachers across the schools in piloting lesson plans with us for one hour, and in the second hour of the session, teachers gave their feedback, having experienced the dynamic themselves. They either redesigned the activity based on their understanding and limitations or looked through the guidelines and created a new one.
During IYAFA 2022, Coast 2 Coast took the spirit of Festival Somos Mar into the Peruvian Amazon and Andes to work with inland fishing communities and Indigenous peoples. It was incredibly exciting to work for the first time with freshwater communities, piloting lesson plans and enrichment activities created for the SSF Guidelines Curriculum to see if these could be relevant and meaningful for local youth living in SSF communities along rivers deep within canyons and rainforests.
Marañón
Tupén Grande, one of the most populated and least accessible communities in the Andean highlights of Peru, was chosen because of the link between Marañón Experience, a rafting company and colleagues of Coast 2 Coast, and one of the teachers from the only primary school in the area. Through this connection, C2C coordinated with the educational center and the students who would later participate in the festival. A team from Coast 2 Coast and Marañón Experience, with volunteers and members of an upriver community, set off on a 2-day rafting trip to the Tupén Grande community. A total of 18 students participated in three days of photography workshops and piloting the same mural activity as C2C facilitated in Los Órganos, highlighting the nearshore aquatic biodiversity and ways to care for it. The move was perfectly translatable, and rather than top-down fisheries regulations, young participants learned more about customary laws related to the co-management of the river.
Oxapampa
C2C partnered with Colectivo Ecológico Amazonía Regenerativa (CEARE) to realize audiovisual workshops in two indigenous communities deep within the Peruvian Amazon. C2C worked with the village of Santo Domingo and Pan de Azucar, facilitating thaumatrope workshops where Yanesha youth and elders produced their own simple animations, an optical illusion based on combining two images with movement. This became the curriculum's very first lesson plan. We also facilitated photography workshops exploring the rainforest's biodiversity and a stop-motion animation on the challenge of illegal logging in the jungle.
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Due to the pandemic, we adapted Festival Somos Mar to include distance-learning co-creation workshops in mural, photography, animation and virtual classes with 922 students. Fortunately, we were also able to work in person with 24 students in various workshops following strict health and safety protocols.
2021
Between 2019 and 2021, Coast 2 Coast was unable to facilitate Festival Somos Mar in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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We are because the ocean is. Healthy seas mean healthy humans. In the spirit of citizen science, Festival Somos Mar sparks a dialogue over issues fisher communities face such as food insecurity, pollution, and corruption in an effort to establish marine reserves and conservation policy.
DATES: February through May 2019
LOCATION: Northern Peru, Humboldt Current
Our inaugural participatory media arts festival for ocean health and community wellbeing toured five local schools in historically marginalized fishing villages along Peru’s northern coast where 70% of the country’s marine biodiversity is located and the largest concentration of oil exploitation operations. Our multidisciplinary team will facilitate audiovisual workshops, teacher training, and an ocean wealth community mapping initiative to establish a dialogue and information exchanges. Our immediate goal is to engage local youth in a playful way that genuinely fosters self-trust, cultural values, and marine stewardship for their coastal communities' sustainable futures.
PARTNERS: Students Rebuild, a program of the Bezos Family Foundation, Ocean Collectiv, Lobitos Cinema Project.
FESTIVAL SOMOS MAR 2019