Papa DJ Emo Rugene on the decks during our event with Deutsche Kinemathek at the historic E-Werk in Berlin
October highlight
On the shoulders of giants
On Sunday 11 October the Kinder Rave landed at the E-Werk, a pillar of the Berlin underground from 1993-1997 which hosted the likes of Carl Cox, Kevin Saunderson, Paul van Dyk and many more during its heyday. Now home to the Deutsche Kinemathek, our collaboration with the Kinemathek turned one of 90s Berlin's most iconic dance floors into a space for parents to enjoy the same music with our families.
FROM THE DANCE FLOOR
Greetings and welcome back to the Kinder Rave Universe.
It's been an intense creative month here at Kinder Rave HQ, as we raced through late nights and lots of design time to finalize a project we just released into the world a few hours ago:
To celebrate our fifth anniversary in 2027, we've teamed up with portrait artist and Friend of the Kinder Rave Maria Silvano to create IT'S CHIC TO BE A PARENT, a photography and storytelling project featuring 12 families from our Berlin community.
The project started with a call to our community over the summer, followed by 12 photo shoots in September and early October, two busy weeks of design, lots of back-and-forth with printers, and a final sprint to get everything ready for launch.
This is a new look for the Kinder Rave, and it's been a pleasure to get back into the creative process of making something from scratch, working with so many interesting people, and seeing an idea turn into reality.
We tried to capture something simple.
The Kinder Rave has always been about creating family spaces that center and celebrate parents. With this project, we hope to take that idea beyond the dance floor.
Nothing represents the daily grind like a calendar (it's the one thing many of us can't live without!). For a storytelling project about how cool parents are, we felt there was nothing more appropriate than the physical object reminding us each day of how much we're capable of juggling.
IT'S CHIC TO BE A PARENT is now available for €30, with worldwide shipping through our brand new Kinder Rave shop. Every purchase will help us to keep creating new spaces and experiences for families in 2027 and beyond.
In January, we'll also donate 10% of calendar profits to SOS-Kinderdörfer weltweit, an organization supporting children and families in vulnerable circumstances around the world.
As a thank-you for being part of our community, we're offering everyone in the Kinder Rave Universe a special 20% discount using code COMMUNITY at checkout:
We're really proud of how this turned out, and grateful to all 12 families for sharing their stories and to Maria for bringing the portraits to life. We hope you find these little glimpses into the lives of other parents as interesting and inspiring as we do.
Finally, if this project resonates with you, we'd love your help getting it out into the world. Whether you pick up a copy for yourself, share this calendar with a friend, or gift it to another special parent in your life, every bit of support means a lot to us.
Stuff you'll also find in this month's newsletter: our Mix of the Month all the way from California; a sneak peek inside the calendar; pictures from our recent events with BOSSA FM, the Deutsche Kinemathek, and Zeit ist Knapp Berlin; our final Berlin Kinder Rave of the year at Monkey Bar; and a documentary recommendation at the end.
Thanks for reading, and see you soon ✌️
-Matt from the Kinder Rave
MIX OF THE MONTH
The Kinder Rave is made possible by the contributions of many talented performers, artists, organizers, and other creative people who happen to be parents.
Berlin Family Radio is our SoundCloud channel where we release live recorded sets from our events along with mixes from parent DJs and supporters all around the world.
This month's mix features DJ Johnin Bakersfield, California, by way of the UK. We connected with John originally on Instagram and were excited when he sent us a mix full of the sounds that made us fall in love with electronic music. Here's how he describes himself:
Originally from Birmingham UK, now living in California with my beautiful wife and 3 children. Growing up in the 90s I used to love going to the local record shops in Birmingham to buy mixes tapes that the local DJs would sell there. I fell in love with the progressive and uplifting sounds of deep house and trance of the mid to late 90s. I decided to start DJing myself to share my love of music, and to share my mixes with others. I'm into all things progressive, melodic and uplifting.
DJ John
Bakersfield, California, USA
Listen to DJ John's set and follow Berlin Family Radio on SoundCloud!
PARENT WISDOM
We are all in search of a balanced life: where family, work (however you define it), friendships, and personal aspirations can live peacefully together.
Becoming a parent rocks this balance to its core.
Who am I now? Am I any good at this? And what am I giving up in the process?
The identity shift after you have kids is no picnic, and amidst all the parenting advice out there, it's the part that no one seems to warn you about in advance.
The good news is: we're all in this together.
That's why every month in this newsletter, you'll meet a new parent from the Kinder Rave community and get a glimpse into how they're thinking about family life with all its highs and lows and moments in between.
This month, we're doing things a little differently.
As part of our calendar project, we invited participants to reflect on their identities, relationships, ambitions, and experiences of raising children.
So instead of featuring just one parent, we're sharing a few of our favorite reflections from the people who helped bring this project to life.
Here's a taste of what they had to say:
What's one thing you're doing really well as a parent?
Finding a good balance between explaining the world and letting them have their own thoughts.
-Leandra, Katharina, and Anton, February 2027
Parenting trio Leandra, Katharina, and Anton at home with their two children
What's one thing you'd like to get better at?
Overthinking the narratives other people attach to motherhood - and getting over a learned sense of having to actively fight stereotypes and “prove” something. Overall, what people think of their own problem and often doesn’t come from a nasty place - I am always trying to focus on my family and ignore any noise!
-Barbara, April 2027
Mama DJ Barbara (Babxi) sorting through her records with partner Travis, a hair stylist
What part of yourself have you fought to hold onto?
Mostly to the part that likes to party, dance, travel and feel free. Babies shouldn't mean that life becomes boring. We travel, we go out, we just do it more selectively.
-Gabo, August 2027
Gabo and partner Heidi with their 6 month-old sidekick
Thanks to Gabo, Leandra, Anton, Katharina, Barbara, and all the parents from our 2027 calendar for opening up and sharing a little bit of themselves with us.
Know a parent who would appreciate having these words of advice on their wall? We know something they might find interesting ;-)
EVENT RECAP
October was one of the busiest Kinder Rave months yet, with three great events: beginning with our collaboration with BOSSA FM, which featured papa DJ and 90s icon Super DJ Dmitry from Deee-Lite in his latest identity as one half of the electronic fusion act Nauti Siren with American singer/saxophonist Jessie Evans. Dmitry and Jessie are partners in life as well as music, and this is the second time they've brought their vibe to the Kinder Rave.
Speaking of fusion, papa DJ Chióca's set from the same event is live on his SoundCloud and YouTube. Hailing from Brazil and Taiwan, one of our favorite things about Chióca is how he masterfully crosses genres, mixing together everything from Classic House to Brazilian Funk, Afro House, and percussive Tech House, with various melodic influences and a Latin-inspired finish. We can't recommend this set highly enough!
The following weekend we were back in action at the Deutsche Kinemathek, one of Europe's leading institutions for film heritage, who invited us to take over their exhibition hall which just so happens to be inside one of Berlin's most legendary former clubs. We want to thank the entire Kinemathek team for embracing our concept and putting on a great event together, which featured cool custom dance floor visuals as well as a film screening room with some of the earliest silent movie reels.
Following our event with the Deutsche Kinemathek, we rounded out the month with our annual Halloween celebration, which took place this year at Zeit ist Knapp, a vacant shopping center in West Berlin which has become one of the city's most innovative cultural spaces in recent years. It's so big you can go rollerskating! It was our sixth time collaborating, and we had a great time. Thanks to our friends from languages.music for once again taking over our Main Floor and making it look the part for Halloween.
A big thanks as well to everyone who entered our costume party contest and congratulations to Jule from Berlin, who won a free pair of our kids ear protection headphones + guest list to the next Kinder Rave with this first class entry:
Not going to lie, we're a bit exhausted after all that time on the time on the dance floor! Thanks to everyone who joined us, and to those of you who signed up and are reading this newsletter for the first time: welcome to the Kinder Rave!
We're always on the lookout for new places to pop up. Got an idea for where to bring the Kinder Rave (in Berlin or beyond)? Send us an email at hello@kinder-rave.org.
WHEN'S THE NEXT KINDER RAVE?
[NOV 22] Kinder Rave x Monkey Bar
A busy year is coming to an end, and we will celebrate our final Kinder Rave of 2026 on Sunday 22 November at Monkey Bar, a funky indoor rooftop overlooking the Berlin Zoo.
This will be a cozy gathering with food by NENI Berlin, drinks for kids and grownups by the team at Monkey Bar, house and techno music by parent DJs INVERNO, Gabricoti and Louisiane, kids table activities, and plenty of natural light for every Vitamin D-weary Berliner.
We're excited to experiment with a new event format this time: to accommodate the early birds among us and give everyone more daylight inside this beautiful location, we're going to be starting in the morning (10am), with an early ticket slot from 10-13h, and a second time slot from 13-16h.
Choose from the ticket options to grab whichever one works best for you. 4pm is sunset!
One of the joys of this project is getting to know people all over the world who are doing wonderful creative things in their communities. At the end of each newsletter, we will share something that got us excited this month.
A father-son documentary about an aging, hyper-prolific artist and the family tasked with managing his overwhelming, lifelong creative legacy.
Sydney Cash (b. 1941) is a New York-based artist who gained national prominence in the late 1960s. In a career of 50 years, he has continually expanded his practice by inventing new ways and techniques for making art. His work is in over 30 museums.
His son Ivan Cash is an award-winning artist and filmmaker exploring what makes us human. His work has been exhibited globally at SXSW, the Brooklyn Museum, London's V&A Museum, and featured in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Guardian.
We're proud to call Ivan a Friend of the Kinder Rave, and we've been excited about this project for while. He spent five years working on the film, which focuses on how his dad's lifetime of compulsive creating impacted him and his family. As parent creatives who encourage other parents to be creative, this is a topic which is often on our minds, especially when we go through phases where we can't always be as present as we'd like to be for our kids.
Sydney Cash Makes Too Much Art just premiered at the Woodstock Film Festival in New York, and we can't wait to see it as soon as it's widely available. Join the film's newsletter to stay on top of the latest!
We believe strongly that one of the best things people can do for other people is to appreciate and amplify each other's hard work:
If you're excited about the Kinder Rave, share this newsletter with your friends!
And you've got something else that you think Kinder Rave parents would be excited to know about, fill in this form and tell us more.
Wherever you're located, if you've got a cool idea, tell us about it so we can share it with the whole community!
Thank you for being part of The Kinder Rave Universe.
