Resilient Ukrainians turn a village clean-up into a rave

Young people in Ukraine have come up with a novel way to help villages devastated by war: hire some musicians, pump up the music and have a dance party while clearing debris.

As lightning forked through the sky and torrential rain poured down, a group of young Ukrainians danced in the shadow of the bombed-out carcass of the historic House of Culture in the village of Ivanivka.

They’d spent the weekend clearing debris in the northern Ukrainian village, which was pummelled by Russians advancing on Kyiv in the early days of the war. They slept in tents or under the stars at a nearby lake.

The “clean-up rave,” as it has been dubbed, is the brainchild of local volunteer group Repair Together and does exactly what it says on the tin: combining the free and fun atmosphere of a music festival with a working bee for devastated communities.

It is as close as many will get to a real-life rave right now, due to nightly curfews in place across Ukraine for the past five months.

Last weekend, more than 100 young people toiled away across several sites in Ivanivka, in Ukraine’s northern Chernihiv region, to the soundtrack of thumping house music emanating from a set of speakers.

While previous iterations of the “clean-up rave” have incorporated DJ sets into the working bee, this event is a more structured affair: a weekend’s work rewarded by a concert featuring popular Ukrainian electro-folk band Onuka.

Though it probably wasn’t as intense of a summer dance party as most were used to due to the inclement weather, it didn’t deter anyone from the task at hand – the work and the dancing.

Ivanivka, like many villages in the Chernihiv region on the main highway to Kyiv, was indiscriminately targeted as Russian tanks rolled in from the north on Feb. 24, en route to the Ukrainian capital, 130 kilometres to the south. Bombed petrol stations and residential homes still line the highway.