Pique Your Cultural Curiosity at A Balearic Beat Hotel

We’re going to Ibiza with Beat Hotel for three days of sunset sounds, Balearic landscapes and bright ideas. In the true spirit of Beat Hotel, the lineup blurs boundaries between music, wellness and food, making this a fine jaunt for the culturally curious. In partnership with Ambient Salon, Trippin will be joining a free-flowing, meandering conversation unpacking what it means to belong; discussing how travel emboldens identity and spurs creativity. See you there.

Liberated from the throes of Franco’s fascism, by the late 1970s Ibiza had carved out its identity as a countercultural enclave for the non-conforming; eventually gaining momentum as Europe’s favourite destination for hazy hedonism and alternative ideas. From the artists fleeing Franco’s dictatorship in the 1930s, to the pacifists escaping the military draft in the wake of the Vietnam War, Ibiza continues to lure alternative thinkers from across the globe seeking to escape the strictures of everyday life. The island has always been home to a constantly evolving community of creatives united by a nomadic worldview, passing through for weeks or months at a time before moving onto another destination on the counterculture circuit. A Balearic Beat Hotel taps into the unique spirit of Ibiza, bringing people together from across the globe to enjoy sensory experiences and compelling conversation; three days of music, discussions and wellness with a generous serving of food plated up by some of London’s most-loved restaurants.

The concept takes cues from the original Beat Hotel, the dilapidated Parisian boarding house known for hosting poets of the legendary Beat movement such as William Borroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and their circle of tastemaker friends. The atmosphere of the hotel was congenial, creative and collaborative, a place for ideas to be shared and shaped; this was the environment the Beat Hotel team wanted to create when they first opened their doors at Glastonbury back in 2011. A decade later, having been on a journey from Glastonbury to Marrakech and beyond, Beat Hotel returns to Ibiza, creating a space for minds to meet amidst glorious landscapes.

We’re flying to Ibiza to get involved with Beat Hotel’s Balearic takeover, partnering with Ambient Salon to chat about what identity means to us. The brainchild of British journalist and dance music historian Joe Muggs, Ambient Salon is about recreating the magic of the chillout room where unlikely groups of people form to engage in free-flowing, unbridled conversation. Our discussion will explore what it means to belong, informed by Joe’s research into the sharing of culture in relation to music, more specifically, how the Windrush generation beckoned in a new era of sound experimentation in Britain, which in turn, sent genre after new genre out into the world. Much like national identity, personal identity is anything but linear, it’s a complex tangle of connections that reaches across borders and generations. We will probe deeper into what it means to belong, and the importance of place for creativity, art and identity.

The cultural programme explores the intersection between music, wellbeing and food, taking place in multiple locations over three days; expect an intimate feast from Berber & Q accompanied by a four hour B2B set in ode to the Balearic sound from rave legends Alfredo and Colleen ‘Cosmo’ Murphy, yoga classes with a live soundtrack of deep drones and warmly warbling basslines, and conversations about the changing role of literature in dance music culture hosted by White Rabbit Books. Turn up or tune in next weekend and pique your cultural curiosity.