Recently in the industrial and manufacturing locations of “Isolation” (multidisciplinary cultural center, founded in 2010 in the former Donetsk plant of insulation materials, well-known in the city and beyond) dreamers gathered together. These are the young people who aspire to transform surrounding, especially urban, environment to end estrangement between people, to expand the space for “warm” human communication and the space exploration, which means, understanding it as “your own” in the positive way that inevitably brings forth the responsibility for it. When we say “dreamers,” we mean, of course, not The Day dreaming type, capable only of unproductive dreaming, but the active implementers of their ideas, focused on deliberate activity, described to the point in the name of the event: “About Dreamers, or Citizen, Make Your Own City!”
The event, which consisted of two parts, was a productive combination of theory and practice. One part was the presentation of Projects Factory – low-budget mini-projects implemented this year by young participants of the program Workshop of Public Activity in nine oblasts of Ukraine and a few Polish cities. Before the presentation a discussion of the problems of city face public transforming took place. The discussion was attended by Serhii Zhadan (writer, member of the Kharkiv project Accumulator), Ksenia Semenova (Kyiv Cyclists Association), Anna Medvedieva (Fund Isolation), and others. The participants discussed the factors that facilitate or hinder the development of space for warm live communication: advanced transportation infrastructure, social composition of the population (particularly, the presence of the middle class that creates and maintains space of this type), and interaction of power with community. Ksenia Semenova spoke about the experience of social practices transformation on the example of fighting for the rights of cyclists in Kyiv: the action Podil Without Cars held a few weeks prior, when Sahaidachnoho Street blocked to traffic served as a platform for communication and recreation of Kyiv citizens, it instantly changed the attitude of many of them to the city, helped them to get the feeling that it is their own, it is their home. Serhii Zhadan dwelled on the theoretical principles of the effective public activity in Ukraine and singled out five indispensable components: it has to be public (not coming from authorities, party, or business, etc.); it has to be initiated from below, not above; it has to synthetically combine several areas (environmental, public, artistic, etc.) in order to expand target audience and social base; it shouldn’t contain any political component (no matter how difficult it is in our situation); finally, it shouldn’t rely on oligarchic capital, which will use the initiative for their own purposes.
“Issues that are now being discussed in Ukraine were topical in Germany about 40 years ago, after which the country has changed,” summed up the conversation Klaus Zillikens, general consul of the Federal Republic of Germany in Donetsk. The transformations in Ukraine are not happening very quickly, however, the consul questioned the statement that has been popular throughout the former Soviet Union and was mentioned a few times, in particular in this discussion, that the reason for it is in mentality differences [calling a spade a spade, it is rather just self-justification. – Ed.]. “We in Germany do not believe that the differences are so fundamental. It is not about the mentality but about the values. For example, we care about the environment, that is why we provide all the conditions for bicycle use.”
The subjects of the presented youth mini-projects covered a wide range of issues: family, education, international relations, culture and art, sport, ecology, patriotic education, law, etc. Participants from the Crimea presented the project “Medicine against Xenophobia”; participants from Lviv brought the project “Let’s Create Together” aimed at encouraging parents to pay more attention to children; event “It is Better Live!” organized in Cherkasy encouraged children and parents to get away from computers and play together outside; and the training session “More Fun Together” held in Donetsk gave the opportunity to all those who wanted to learn to communicate with disabled people. Colleagues from Poland presented music project “City with Sound” implemented with participation of blind people – they recorded a few minutes song with the sounds of the city accompanied by stories of blind people of different age about how they hear the city. Polish participants also presented the art project “Fence – Word on Ukrainian Street Art” initiated by the organizers of all-Ukrainian flash-mob that took place in Ukraine on September 8. “Families need hugs, Ukraine – too! Embrace it!” called out the participants of the event and embraced each other.
