Kyiv club and bar owners, and festival organizers have joined ranks to create UNight, an initiative supporting Kyiv’s nightlife: bars and venues, promoters, artists and Kyivites who enjoy going out. The initiative was launched by Keller, a night club; Club on Kyrylivska St; Khvylovyi, another club; Sloi bar; and three festivals: Dirty Dog, Art – Weapon! and Ravers’ Party.

You can read this interview in Ukrainian.

The Village Ukraine talks to UNight founders Andrii Yankovskyi and Yurii Pohrebniak (owners of Khvylovyi and Bahrianyi, two Kyiv nightclubs), Garik Pledov (owner of Polygon, a music label, and the Art – Weapon! NGO), Anastasiia Syradoieva (Club on Kyrylivska St) and Serhii Leshchenko (Ravers’ Party).

– UNight’s launch caused a good bit of public controversy. A lot of people were saying that now, during the war, is not the time for initiatives like this. Why do you think people think that way?

Garik Pledov: I think that people who were saying it’s an untimely project didn’t take the time to understand what it really is about and didn’t fully grasp the context. Our goal isn’t to lobby against the curfew. Everyone who joined the initiative is against any businesses staying open during the curfew. We don’t endorse violations of the law here in Ukraine. We came together because now is the most opportune moment for us to consolidate. Almost every establishment that joined UNight at some point operated as a shelter or a storage facility for humanitarian aid. Each of us operated in accordance with our own plans and did what we thought was right at the time, but coming together will help us influence our shared audience more, and so become more effective and more useful – both to each other and to the general public.

Andrii Yankovskyi: Cultural diplomacy is very important and affects international support and aid for Ukraine. Every grant that a Ukrainian organization doesn’t get is snapped up by a Russian organization. If there are no Ukrainian performers at a festival and the organizers need to fill their Eastern Europe quota, they’ll invite Nina Kraviz [a Russian DJ] or someone like that. Every time we turn away from the world or fail to advocate for our interests, the Russians get to push their agenda.

You can fight windmills and complain about the absence of Ukrainian artists among [international festival] line-ups, but we won’t get any invites if there are no institutional structures for representing Ukraine on the global arena. We know we can’t get money from Ukraine’s Culture Ministry because their funds must be used to defend our country. We need to look for resources abroad. That’s difficult to do for individual establishments – but much easier as a community.

Yurii Pohrebniak: [UNight] is also about the economy and creating workplaces. This isn’t something that only became important now – it was important before. There’s been a need for an organization like this for a long time, since before Russia’s full-scale invasion. In a sense, we might be late. And besides, it’s part of our cultural history. Not everyone understands that [nightlife] is part of our culture in no way inferior than its other manifestations. Internationally, some electronic musicians play sold-out stadiums just as rock or pop stars do.

Donating part of our profits from event entry fees to the Ukrainian Armed Forces works even better for us than it does for restaurants. It’s difficult for a restaurant to donate some of the profit from, say, burger sales, because they’re already operating at a tight margin. It’s easier for clubs to do something like that; they have more economic potential. I think everyone needs some form of rest so they don’t lose their mind. Some people go to the gym, others go to a party. This probably only takes four or five hours out of the 160 hours in a week – for the rest of the time those people can be helping the armed forces.

Garik Pledov: Everyone took night life as a purely electronic-music focused. [But] The Art – Weapon! festival that we organized in Kyiv and later also in Berlin is not about electronic music at all. It brings together theater, educational lectures, visual art, and audiovisual performances. Only 30% of events at last year’s Dirty Dog festival were purely focused on electronic music, the rest explored a range of different genres.

Our organization is about culture as such. If you look back on how Russia has been trying to root out everything to do with Ukraine, they’ve often used culture and language to this end. Support for the sector can help us share our own authentic culture and to support the patriotic spirit. That’s an important aspect of what we’re doing.

– Government officials in charge of regulating nightlife say that they need more hard data. The government takes you seriously if you can show it that nightlife is a major part of the overall economy. Is UNight planning to gather data and research the market?

Anastasiia Syradoieva: One of our goals is to gather data, that’s definitely on the agenda. The experience of our foreign colleagues in the nightlife business shows us that this kind of data is often the key argument in the dialogue with local authorities and government institutions. But right now we have different priorities. Cultural institutions represented by UNight, including Club on Kyrylivska St, have had to shift the format of their work since 24 February. We’re focused on helping the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Right now we’re fundraising to buy drones for the 72nd Separate Mechanized Brigade. This doesn’t just help the army – doing things like this can help shift public perceptions of “nightlife”.

Andrii Yankovskyi: I should note that any kind of data today won’t represent the full scale of our operations: everyone works at about 50% – or less – capacity compared to the times before Covid and the full-scale war. Still, we’re planning [to gather and analyze data].

– Before February 24, clubs in Kyiv and elsewhere were often victims of radicals’ attacks or subject to illegal law enforcement inspections. Is UNight a way to oppose that? Will you work on coming up with a plan of action for situations like that?

Anastasiia Syradoieva: I think our organization is a rare opportunity to mend fences and build a real dialogue with the government, to explain the difficulties we face, to reach some kind of understanding, and obtain protection and just plain compliance with Ukrainian law when it comes to the so-called “nightlife” establishments – even those that actually operate during the day. Of course that’s one of our goals. We will work on establishing a dialogue with the Culture Ministry, the police, and other government institutions and local authorities.

Yurii Pohrebniak: We haven’t yet worked out a shared action plan [in the case of Ukraine’s Financial Investigations Service inspections] because we’ve just launched. Don’t dismiss publicity, because it’s an effective tool. For example, [the law enforcement raid of Khvylovyi] gained a lot of publicity, which played to [the club’s] advantage. The police responded to the public resonance. It would be good if these issues could be addressed in the legal domain. This is one of the things we’ll work on. 

Serhii Leshchenko: Our organization is all about getting its members to abide by law – not about helping them evade law. That’s an important detail. That’s why we’re not inviting establishments that don’t observe the curfew.

– The government can’t currently fund music because it’s spending all the money to support the military. That’s what enables UNight to take on the role of a cultural diplomat and to act independently. Was that one of your goals? Tell me about working with partners abroad.

Serhii Leshchenko: The government has obligations concerning the military, the soldiers fighting on the front, and national security. Of course there’s a shortage of resources to support cultural initiatives, which also often meet rightful resistance from the public. The main thing we can expect from the government right now is that it won’t interfere with private initiatives and ensure that all actors in the cultural industry comply with the law. If law enforcement officials abuse power, they should know that they’re no longer dealing with private organizations, but with an association that will protect its members’ interests.

Andrii Yankovskyi: Ukrainian cultural events started to take place beyond Ukraine itself in the past two years: Closer [a club in Kyiv] often holds events abroad, Garik Pledov organized the Art – Weapon! festival in Berlin, Keller held several events in Warsaw. This wouldn’t be possible without the Culture Ministry’s support. Unfortunately, half of the artists [performing at these events] are men, so they need permission to leave the country. Anyone who has taken artists abroad knows how difficult it was before the scandal [with the stand-up comedian Andrii Schehel]. Good working relations with the Culture Ministry, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Ukrainian Institute would enable us to organize more events.

Garik Pledov: I had experience working with the Ministry of Culture even before the launch of UNight. We took around 40 male artists to Berlin for the Art – Weapon! festival, and they all came back. We’ve already worked with them, and the Culture Ministry appears prepared to work with us and help us.