Age: 23
Education: Slavic Pedagogical Lyceum
Profession: Community manager at InshaOsvita
Did you know? When Skrypnyk was 7, he broke his spine and had to learn how to walk again.
“Shum rave was born out of love,” Eugene Skrypnyk says. Love for his friends, love for his hometown of Sloviansk and love for his region, the eastern Donbas.
Many associate the east of Ukraine and the town of Sloviansk with war, occupation, and danger. Skrypnyk wants to change that. He already has started to do it.
It’s been six years since the occupation and liberation of Sloviansk. But the memories and emptiness remain. Although the town is free, the youth felt trapped. A noise curfew meant that there were no gatherings or parties in the city center after 11. Instead, there was silence and haunting memories.
Skrypnyk’s best friend told him she wanted a place to dance, to feel free and to let music drown out the silence they were stuck with. He planned to give her exactly that. “When you love someone, you’ll do anything for them,” he says.
Skrypnyk gathered a few eastern DJs, found an abandoned building in his town and set up the first Shum rave. In Ukrainian and Russian, Shum means “noise.” A hundred people came and danced until 7 in the morning. The next Shum brought even more. By the third event, news of the rave had spread throughout the east. People came from the neighboring towns of Kramatorsk and Druzhkivka and from farther places like Kharkiv and even Kyiv.
Before, when mentioning Sloviansk, people would think of the war. Now, in the east, if you mention Sloviansk, they think of Shum rave.
And when they think of Shum rave, they think of Skrypnyk.
Although the coronavirus stalled many of his plans, Skrypnyk didn’t let that stop him from his mission. That’s the type of person he is. He gained support from the United Nations Development Program to create films of beautiful locations in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. By filming DJ sets in these locations, he hopes to spread eastern techno culture, showcase that there is beauty in Donbas and encourage tourism within the region.
Shum is not the only thing Skrypnyk is involved with. He also works with Plan B fest, a festival that brings in lecturers and speakers about innovation in eastern Ukraine during the day and concerts and DJs at night. The festival gathers creatives and innovators in the hopes of improving their region. It’s a familiar mission for Skrypnyk.
Skrypnyk has many plans for the future. Shum has just started to grow. He planned to open a school for DJs, but is waiting until the pandemic dies down.
“We are just getting started,” he says.
