From party to platform.
Carduma Coletivo · co-founded in Ericeira. What started as events became a cultural platform. I led the brand from day zero.
The numbers.
Not a client. A venture I co-founded and led until August 2026. Carduma continues.
The idea.
Some brands are built to sell something. Others are built to give people a reason to come together.
Carduma is based in Ericeira, a World Surfing Reserve on the coast of Portugal.
There was surf culture. There was design. There were places to eat and drink. What was missing was the thing that holds them together: a reason for people to meet, and a way to make that meeting mean something.
The arc.
The party
The first chapter was events. Many, back to back, in Ericeira.
The platform
The events revealed that the real asset wasn't the party · it was the people, the music, the stories, the places, the images.
Events became one expression of the brand, not the brand itself.
The scale
With the platform in place, the formats grew: two festivals of its own, the Lisbon Connection Week in Ericeira, the crossing to Athens.
The platform made the scale possible. Not the other way round.
The language and the archive.
Carduma didn't need to keep saying this is cool. It needed to show why it was worth being there.
The identity is analogue photography, grain, high-contrast type, an editorial grid.
- CARDUMA SESSIONS music sessions.
- VINYL SELECTION records, selected and played.
- CARDUMA DIGS digging for records.
- CARDUMA JOURNEYS places and scenes.
- PEOPLE & STORIES the people behind it.
Vinyl mattered here. Not as nostalgia · as a physical expression of curation, discovery and cultural memory.
Who came through.
Portugal · Brazil · Mexico · Cuba · Japan · Germany · Argentina · Spain · Italy
Forty artists from nine countries.
Ericeira meets Athens.
A collaboration between Carduma, CONVĪVIUM and Armando Pizzeria. DJs from Portugal to Athens.
Carduma wasn't tied to a venue. It was tied to a way of curating.
Carduma × Lusophonica · Carduma × CONVĪVIUM · Lisbon Connection Week · Nopropzz · DJ Zaidan (Brazil) · Rii (Estonia) · Ericeira Analogue · Iki Iki Bamboo Apparel · The Beaded Lady · Dolce Vita Ericeira
The video on the Aflora homepage comes from this world.
Don't create another world. Connect the ones that already exist.
What stays.
An audience consumes. A community participates. It's the second pillar of this studio, and Carduma is where I learned to build it.
Relevance and sustainability are not the same thing. That lesson reshaped the model · fewer events, more curation, stronger partners.
I led Carduma until August 2026. It continues.
This is what Culture looks like · brand, content and growth, one partner, one or two brands at a time.
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