{"id":27566,"date":"2024-05-20T17:29:16","date_gmt":"2024-05-20T23:29:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/annual-burrofest-to-take-place-june-15-in-mancos\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T00:05:00","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T06:05:00","slug":"annual-burrofest-to-take-place-june-15-in-mancos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/annual-burrofest-to-take-place-june-15-in-mancos\/","title":{"rendered":"Annual BurroFest to take place June 15 in Mancos"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The
The annual BurroFest is expected to attract around 1,000 attendees this year. (Mancos Creative District\/Courtesy Photo)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

On Saturday, June 15 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., the Mancos Creative District will host the annual community favorite BurroFest in Mancos Boyle Park and on Grand Avenue.<\/p>\n

This \u201cmuch-beloved and quirky festival\u201d will provide a full day of family-friendly activity. This year, the BurroFest planning committee shared that the festival will have more artists, more activities for the children and \u201cdefinitely more silliness.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are very excited about this year because it\u2019s going to be bigger and better than ever,\u201d said Stephanie Hallam, Mancos Creative District event and marketing manager. \u201cWe really look to the community of creatives that we have, and so this has been a fun, quirky event that ties in burro history and relationships in the southwest region and even Colorado at large.\u201d<\/p>\n

BurroFest was created in 2019 after world-renowned artist Veryl Goodnight expressed the idea of holding a festival to celebrate the burro, one of the animals that played an important role in the growth of Southwest Colorado.<\/p>\n

\u201cDonkeys or burros have long been key to the history here, dating back to mining days in Durango and Telluride,\u201d organizers said. \u201cBurroFest 2024 will be an exciting celebration of this lovable, legendary animal with art demonstrations, a maker\u2019s market with over 20 vendors, live bands and even a BurrOlympics themed obstacle course with 10 teams running.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of the returning \u201ccrowd favorite\u201d donkeys are Coco, Hamilton, Freya La\u2019BRAYa and Alice. Sixteen burros, including four ambassador burros, will be present.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are introducing burros ambassadors this year, and those are basically burros that will get to mingle throughout the crowd,\u201d Hallam said. \u201cWe wanted to make it so kids could come up and touch the burros and allow them to be exploratory and adventurous.\u201d<\/p>\n

Burros will be \u201cmodels\u201d for 10 artists who will have the opportunity to create their art live during the festival. The animals artists who will participate this year are Shawn Ahkeah, Dana Aldis, Sarah Drummond, Alys Hansen, Miki Harder, Elizabeth Kinahan, Susan Matteson, Jenn Rawling, Cynthia Sadler and Dai Salwen.<\/p>\n

Fifteen to 20 other artists will be featured in the Maker\u2019s Market.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have watched some artists really grow since they started working with live animals,\u201d Mancos Creative District\u2019s TJ Zark told The<\/em> Journal<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Visitors will see the artists working with their live art models, meet the four ambassador burros and cheer for teams competing in the BurrOlympics.<\/p>\n

Children may participate in crafts, henna, a bouncy house, face-painting, library story time and other art-based activities.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you wanted to spend a day in the park, bring your chair, bring your kids and spend the whole day at Boyle Park,\u201d Zark said.<\/p>\n

The BurroFest schedule will start with a Mancos Public Library story time in the park at 9:30 a.m. with the official welcome and the national anthem at 10 a.m.<\/p>\n

From 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., there will be obstacle course that will be run by the burros, with awards to follow. The band Hotel Draw will play from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m., and will be followed by the band Alex Graf\u2019s Super PAC from 2:30 p.m. to 4 p.m.<\/p>\n

All-day activities include a Maker\u2019s Market on Grand Avenue, animal artists in the park, beer and food trucks and kid\u2019s activities.<\/p>\n

There will also be a raffle and silent auction. The raffle will be for gallery and store gift cards and products downtown. The silent auction items are donations from local artists, and they can be viewed next to the merchandise tent at the event.<\/p>\n

Food trucks that will be present include Chuckwagon, Mona Makes, Subversion and Yia Yia. There will also be a beer garden.<\/p>\n

\u201cDowntown galleries, studios, restaurants, and businesses will be open and featuring their own entertainment, food and festivities. This annual event draws people from Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and all over the state, including the Front Range. We expect over 1,000 attendees in 2024 so book your hotel or accommodations early if you are coming from out of town,\u201d organizers said.<\/p>\n

Organizers also ask that visitors who bring their dogs keep them on a leash and at least 10 feet from the burros at all times, as burros are naturally inclined to go on the offensive against animals that they deem as predators.<\/p>\n

While the event is free and open to the public, Zark shared that donations are welcome to help keep events like this going in the Mancos area via the Mancos Creative District.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere will be opportunities to make a donation so that we can continue in the future,\u201d Zark said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

year\u2019s event promises to be bigger and better <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27567,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[363,364,510,28,83,60,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-27566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-arts","tag-community","tag-festive-event-including-carnival","tag-headlines","tag-mancos","tag-montezuma-county","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27566"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27566\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80107,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27566\/revisions\/80107"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27566"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=27566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}