Mattie Kelly Arts Foundation

The Mattie Kelly Arts Foundation has anchored Destin’s cultural life since 1995, when it organized as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit to bring visual and performing arts programming to the Emerald Coast. Today the foundation runs the Mattie Kelly Cultural Arts Village at 4323 Commons Drive West, a campus that hosts its concert series, festivals, and education programs on land the organization has developed over three decades.

The foundation takes its name from Mattie May Kelly, who moved to Destin in 1935 with her husband, Coleman Lee Kelly, and their five children as part of one of the town’s founding families. The Kellys started out as turpentine farmers before becoming prominent local business owners, and they are widely credited with helping build Destin’s early tourism and fishing industries. Mattie herself studied at Rollins College and earned a degree in English from Florida State University, with further coursework at Columbia University and Harvard Summer School, and she expressed her own artistic side by composing music and playing piano and organ. The foundation was built on those cultural and educational values following her death in 1992.

Growth since 1995 followed a deliberate timeline. The first Destin Festival of the Arts was held that year at Kelly Plantation, the foundation inherited a 52-acre tract of land in 1999 to build a permanent home, it broke ground on the Mattie Kelly Cultural Arts Village in 2005, and it received a 1 million dollar grant from the Dugas Family Foundation in 2012 that funded the first phase of construction, completed in 2013 alongside a broader rebranding of the organization.

Concerts in the Village brings touring bands to the arts village on Thursday evenings, with a lineup that mixes classic rock, reggae, disco, and modern pop for a family-friendly crowd that spreads out on the lawn with chairs and picnics. Each fall, the Festival of the Arts takes over the grounds with original artwork from visiting artists, live art demonstrations, food and alcoholic beverage vendors, street performers, and activities built for children, drawing crowds for what has grown into one of the longer-running fall arts festivals on this stretch of coast, now marking around three decades of editions. The foundation also runs an Artful Dining Series, a set of wine-paired dinners hosted at fine dining restaurants around the area, with proceeds supporting MKAF’s broader programming.

Alongside its public events, the foundation’s ArtsReach program delivers performing and visual arts experiences directly into schools, programs for individuals with special needs, and military communities across Northwest Florida. Since 1995, ArtsReach has invested more than 400,000 dollars in outreach, reaching roughly 75 schools and agencies and logging more than 17,000 attendees at its public programs, supported by more than 4,000 hours of volunteer time and a patron base of more than 500 businesses and individuals.

Visitors passing through Destin on a Thursday evening during concert season can walk into Concerts in the Village without much planning, since the series is built as a casual, drop-in event on the arts village lawn. The fall Festival of the Arts draws bigger crowds and rewards arriving early for parking and the best selection at artist booths. Because MKAF’s calendar shifts from season to season, checking the current schedule on the foundation’s website before visiting is the most reliable way to catch a specific concert or event during a Destin trip.