With the advent of a possible COVID-19 vaccine, there has been renewed optimism for the world nightlife community. In the meantime, there are still difficulties regarding venues and organizations staying afloat until this has a lasting impact. One such institution is that of Ukrainian underground haven Closer and associated Strichka Festival and Brave! Factory.
The venue and art centre has been a hotspot for underground house and techno but the growing cost of operations and limited income has meant that Closer has fallen into debt arrears. As is the case with other venues and organizations that find themselves in this sad situation have turned to their avid supporters for help.
(below the post by Sergey Yatsenko, translated)
Closer need to raise 17,000 Euro by December 20th in order to balance their books. As well as outstanding rent this amount will also help to pay staff costs, utility bills and security costs. This amount will also be required to be matched again by March 1st to enable the venue to weather the colder months until the summer season will hopefully bring with it an influx of events and subsequent income required to survive.
As a thank you for your much-needed support donors will receive a ticket for any regular club event for donations of 15 euros and above. For donations of 30 euros and above donors will receive a ticket for a special event such as their wicked Halloween event. Finally, for donations of 90 euros and above the offer of a festival ticket (Strickha Festival or Brave! Factory) will change hands. In these tough times, any support is valued, even if it is just a sharing of this post.
Sergey Yatsenko:
“Asking for help is scary enough for me because I have to admit my weakness. That’s why I postponed this post as much I postpone my doctor’s visits, solving crisis issues in relationships, executing important but disturbing things.
Since March, Closer has been in quarantine and we were constantly inventing some new formats just to keep afloat somehow. Instead of Saturday and Friday parties, we did some experimental events, brought only a few foreign artists throughout the season, launched a daytime party format, and managed to even do a few night events, also some live streams.
But the maintenance of a big machine like Closer requires significant monthly expenses. We have reduced the constant spending number from ₴430К to less than 300 thousand per month. To do this, we cut down the staff of friends who worked mainly on festivals; we transferred the gallery space to sublet; closed and almost dissolved all Savage Food restaurant staff; returned unused alcohol supplies to suppliers. All of this, as well as the opportunity to use the finances from the festival budget, helped us survive until winter, collecting the debt of ₴1 000 000, the part of which we planned to cover at the expense of the grant we won.
Unfortunately, there is a high chance that the grant payment is unlikely to be made by our state this year due to an empty treasury, and our landlords don’t want to wait for our rent payments any more. This is why we are launching a campaign to support Closer. We need to collect about 600 thousand UAH in December and collect the same amount before spring so that we can cover winter rental costs and also patch holes in the festival budget.
To do this, we have made a website where you can buy high-cost tickets for our future events. Once, after we invested all the money we earned into the new Festival, my mom asked me what would I do if something happens to me because I don’t have absolutely any savings in case of a sudden illness or unpredictable disasters. I replied that I’m counting on help, the people we’ve been trying for all these seven years”
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