From free parties to feeding the vulnerable: how a ’90s rave organiser switched sound systems for community kitchens

In the autumn of 2015, veteran free party promoter Steve Stavrides found himself in an empty concrete building next door to the Jungle refugee camp in Calais: a “dirty, minging warehouse, with no electricity, no water, no security, no toilets,” he says. As a founding member of Bedlam sound system, Steve had occupied hundreds of disused industrial spaces exactly like this one, and used them as venues for countless illegal raves. This time, though, he and his crew had other ideas. “The other charities in the building looked at us and said, ‘Who are you?’” he explains. “We were like, ‘Oh, we’re going to come over and cook for everyone.”

Steve’s pivot from throwing free parties to feeding refugees might seem unexpected. Think of an illegal rave, and you probably imagine drug-fuelled hedonism, anarchic mayhem and booming bassbins, not volunteers carefully peeling carrots and wiping down work surfaces. But it turns out that jungle sound systems and the Calais Jungle have more in common than you might think: Steve’s story reveals the connections between today’s frontline refugee activism, and the organising principles behind the ’90s free party scene.

“It’s alway been about the boxes,” Steve explains to me over Zoom. In the present day, this means industrial ovens and bulk food donations from supermarkets, but as a teenager in the mid-’80s, it was speakers. “I always wanted a sound system, but it was reggae rather than rave,” Steve says of his childhood inspirations. Acid house was the trigger for eventually building a system, though: within a few months of his first rave, he and his mates had built their own rig and started throwing Bedlam events. “We loved it,” Steve says simply. “Loved breaking into buildings, sneaking around, setting up the sound system before the police found out, getting all the people in there. We just loved that buzz.”

Perhaps surprisingly, given Steve’s subsequent activist efforts, and unlike other free party sound systems like Spiral Tribe, politics weren’t really a priority for Bedlam. “I don’t remember us ever having political discussions,” he says. “We were definitely like, ‘Fuck the police’, and we knew there were tons of empty buildings because of Thatcher… but really it was about the party, about getting people together.” If Bedlam had a guiding ideology, it was logistical rather than political: the power of getting the right people into the right place at the right time.