Art With Me *GNP is a community-driven festival that curates art, talks, music, wellness and cultural experiences as a platform to inspire change and foster awareness amongst attendees.
Peter Ruprecht Photography
The festival debuted in 2018 as Tulum’s first Arts & Cultural Festival and took place this year from April 24-28.
Peter Ruprecht Photography
The festival was co-founded by Ahau Collection founder David Graziano and Tulum resident Jorge Mondragon with the goal of uniting businesses, tourists and the local community to spearhead environmental and cultural initiatives for the benefit of Tulum.
Peter Ruprecht Photography
Our mission is to inspire and activate the community to help preserve Tulum while having fun at the same time. Our Care With Me program works year-round to support projects that help solve Tulum’s solid waste management problem and promote a sustainable future. Join us to experience 200+ activations and 30+ musical acts in one place.
Peter Ruprecht Photography
Co-Founder of Art with Me *GNP Tulum, Jorge Mondragon, exclusively interviewed with us at The 7th Magazine & shared the following insight regarding the work to come post Tulum’s Arts & Eco-Culture festival –
Peter Ruprecht Photography
Art With Me started with a vision of how we can help Tulum, as now Tulum has become a very popular place in the world. It’s like the good & bad things about Instagram; Now everybody wants to come to Tulum, whereas 5-6 years ago nobody really knew of Tulum, similar to Instagram. Originally, David Graziano (Co-Founder of Art with Me *GNP), came to me with the idea on how to do a festival to create conscious, as well as awareness about the sustainability & fragility of what Tulum truly is.
Peter Ruprecht Photography
Since David lives here, & I partly live here, we both started to think that Tulum didn’t necessarily need tourism for parties or the beauty in particular. We however needed more tourism to bring a conscious awareness about sustainability. That’s how we realized that this message could be delivered with the festival in 2 ways. One way we could deliver the message for the tourists on what to do & what not to do when they come here to Tulum. While the other message for the locals of Tulum could be delivered by bringing awareness about the waste management, noise pollution, & black beach water. Whilst tying both messages into the Mayan culture for the beach & town people.
Peter Ruprecht Photography
So David & I decided that we would use art with live music & great food, paired with wellness, as a way to create eco-activism for people to have awareness of the beauty, as well as the problems, of the area.
Peter Ruprecht Photography
Culturally, the tourists, townspeople, & beach people are very different in Tulum – which is why we needed to deliver the message in strategic ways. Obviously, art people have a a different outlook than those whom may solely follow parties for of their favorite DJ’s & festivals, like those that come here during New Years celebrations. Our message was to more-so have the awareness of not only coming to party, but to also take care of the place in an artistic fashion.
Peter Ruprecht Photography
We felt that art was one of the best ways to deliver our message of a conscious awareness about sustainability & Mexico right now is big in contemporary art. We have some of the biggest contemporary artists in the world, with 2 of the biggest contemporary art galleries in the world, with Zona Maco contemporary art fair ranking as 3rd best in the world.
Phoebe Montague Photography
So for the art we did a mix between contemporary art & Burning Man scale sculptures, following the wellness factors of yoga + mediation, paired with a live music mix genres such as reggae, regional music such as Bronco, & incredible electronic artists such as Bob Moses – which was the eclectic intention & meaning following the focus of sustainability for Art with Me *GNP.
As Peter Ruprecht’s photography was featured on the cover of The 7th Magazine’s Exotic Issue following the Art with Me *GNP, we will be covering the post-process of all that will go into the sustainability practices of Co-Founders Jorge Mondragon & David Graziano. Throughout the months we will be sharing more on Jorge’s interview with us, as well as updates on their eco-cultural initiatives –
Follow The Story via The Exotic Issue Here
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