We have a new family of 142 people

The first group of 142 travellers, 81 of whom are young Ukrainian musicians, including 14 minors, accompanied by their mothers and other family members, arrived in Ljubljana on the night of 6 to 7 March after a long and complicated journey. In five months they have already performed at thirty-two concerts.

Conductor, musicologist and artistic director of the Slovenian Youth Orchestra Živa Ploj Peršuh and music producer Tomo Peršuh came up with the idea of helping young musicians from all over Ukraine when they saw footage of a destroyed Ukrainian music academy. The decision was also prompted by a conversation with the conductor, founder and artistic director of the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, Oksana Liniv, who suggested that they try to rescue as many young musicians as possible from the country under attack.

The project, which ultimately grew from an evacuation effort into an artistic, fundraising, solidarity and integration project, was named Glasba za prihodnost/Music for the future, and its aim is not only to offer young musicians a safe temporary refuge but to provide a stimulating and rich linguistic, educational and musical environment, continuous education and the chance to gain experience by working with renowned professors, conductors and soloists. And there is also what Živa Ploj Peršuh keeps repeating: the young Ukrainians in Ljubljana must know that they are not refugees but musicians; she and her colleagues help them maintain their composure, pride, joy and hope.

Many individuals and institutions helped to ensure that everything went as smoothly as possible. For help with the organisation, Tomo Peršuh turned to an acquaintance from Maribor, the humanitarian volunteer Uroš Dokl who had experience helping the children of Syrian refugees in Turkey (for the Jakob project, which cared for 75 Syrian children in Turkey, he was among the nominees for Delo’s Person of the Year 2015). The City Municipality of Ljubljana quickly helped with buses and four drivers, and also arranged initial accommodation at the Celica and Tresor youth hostels. In addition to the Mayor of Ljubljana, Zoran Janković , help in resolving logistical and, above all, bureaucratic problems came from Andrej Šter of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; the Slovenian police and several embassies also helped, and numerous donors, not only from Slovenia, joined the project.

In mid-May this year, Živa Ploj Peršuh said in an interview with Delo : “Three hundred more are waiting to come. We have arranged accommodation for them, including with families who responded, and for now we depend solely on donations. We can say that we have a new family of 142 people.” Naturally, help also came from Caritas, the Red Cross, UNICEF Slovenia and other institutions, as well as companies that, for example, paid six months’ market rent for accommodation in Ljubljana; invitations are arriving from various European orchestras, Slovenska filantropija helped make Slovenian language lessons possible for the young musicians – the list of benefactors is long.

In five months the young musicians have already performed at thirty-two concerts, and the concert in May at Cankarjev dom has probably remained a special memory for both them and the audience. At that concert – together with fellow musicians from the Slovenian Youth Orchestra – they raised contributions both for themselves and their families (as by then they had not yet received decisions from the state guaranteeing them even basic assistance) and for UNICEF’s programmes helping their peers still in Ukraine. But something else was key: under the baton of conductor Živa Ploj Peršuh, they performed with one of the greatest violinists of our time, maestro Gidon Kremer, who, before the concert, in an interview with Patricija Maličev for Delo said: “I only hope that my collaboration with the young Ukrainian musicians will act as an injection of goodwill, and genuine support on my part.”