Two stages, twenty-five DJs and not a single ticket: for three days straight Wrocław has been playing for something you cannot see on anyone

Since Friday the HUTA site in Wrocław has been running “Gramy dla Głowy” — three days and two nights of electronic music on two stages, and you get in without a ticket. Today is the final day: it ends on the stroke of midnight.

The initiative was written up by Muno, one of its co-organisers.

The names behind it are the ones that normally compete for the same crowd: four Polish outlets and collectives from the electronic scene — Muno, 4Clubbers, Shining Beats and Rave Girls Poland — put the weekend together with the venue itself. The formal organiser is the Ośrodek Kultury i Sztuki we Wrocławiu, the city’s centre for culture and the arts, and the project is co-financed from the budget of the Lower Silesian region.

A foundation whose name is the whole point

The partner here is the Nie Widać Po Mnie foundation, and the name is no accident: it translates as “you can’t see it on me”. The foundation works on the mental health of young Poles, and every złoty raised goes to it.

The money is earmarked for support and psychoeducation with children and teenagers: helping them make sense of their own emotions and showing them that the hard things can be said out loud. It is being raised two ways — through an online collection box on siepomaga.pl and through “bricks” at the foundation’s stand on site.

“Entry is free — you throw in as much as you want and as much as you can. All the proceeds from the event will go to the Nie Widać Po Mnie foundation,” wrote Rave Girls Poland.

Across the three days the bill runs to twenty-five names on two stages. The open-air POLANKA works in daylight, while the night half moves into Hala Filtry: on Friday 1001010010 and Hekato played there, and dlaczego.tak and MORDEAUX closed the night with a three-hour set that ran to five in the morning.

Saturday was the densest day of the three: Bit Much — that is, I hug speakers and Jules back to back — opened the evening, MIHVU and daisy cutter played two and a half hours straight, and after midnight the decks went to Ravetoszyn, Pan JJ, CHLOPISKO and Orlewicz.

What is left for today

Sunday starts earlier than the days before it — three in the afternoon. Then come Maro, Myzra, tokami, Michał Macewicz and Hedonist, and the closing set of the entire weekend belongs to kEczuP: eleven to midnight, exactly.

HUTA itself is a former industrial site on Grabiszyńska street that Wrocław has turned into a cultural venue; you recognise it by the wooden giant made of building offcuts that sits above the entrance road. This season its Hala Filtry was given a roof for the first time — which is the only reason the night half of the programme was possible at all.

It is worth saying separately what is not there. This is not a burnout conference with lectures and panels: the programme is music, the foundation’s stand and a conversation with whoever is on duty at it. The rest is done by the plain fact that twenty-five artists agreed to play for free.

Earlier we wrote about how club culture is ceasing to be a young people’s thing.