Community – Vidnova

Vidnova Community aims to be a safer, more inclusive, and competence-guided space where individuals can connect, share experience, resources and expertise, collaborate, and collectively work towards recovery and growth. The focus is on fostering meaningful connections and synergy in civil society in Ukraine through shared values, practices, and resources.

Our Community consists of people engaged within all Vidnova programs.

Our Community

Olha Ruban

Olha moved from Hostomel to Czech Republic, Krumlov. Olha has been working with artistic glass in the lampwork technique since 2008. Before the war, she had her workroom and constantly held individual and group workshops. She plans to restore the workroom and renew her creative and teaching work.

Lab

Liubov Rakovytsia

DII-Ukraine

linkedin.com/company/dii-ukraine

Liubov is the head of Democratic Initiatives Incubator NGO. She is an expert in the communication of the reintegration of residents in occupied territories, countering propaganda, and verification of sources from the temporarily occupied territories. Within Vidnova Lab, Liubov together with Iryna Solovey and Lera Lauda research how experiencing the trauma of war and accepting its consequences, affect the future healing of the community and the country, as well as its further restoration and strengthening. The project envisions developing a tool for self-assessment for teams that engage in the community-led revival. They focus on the context of competent leadership for the democratic revival of Ukraine with a focus on resilience as the common ground between strategies of the grassroots civic forces, state, donors and local government institutions.

communication

communities

competent leadership

Anastasia Pobidash

Activist Anastasia Pobidash lives in Irpin, Kyiv region. She held the “Culture for Nature” training festival to restore the nature of Ukraine with the help of cultural events. The first festival was in April, inviting 26 creative teams from the Kyiv region. The participants’ contributions aimed to restore the park zone of de-occupied Irpin.

Maria Valtina

Maria Valtina used to live in Kyiv, but moved to Nitra, Slovakia. She is an opera singer, and as part of the fellowship she will work on concerts dedicated to 20th-century American classical music to introduce the public to classical works that are known abroad but little known in Ukraine.

opera singer

classical music

popularization of Ukrainians

returnees

Lab

Daryna Pyrogova

2023.ukrainianpavilion.org/program/30

Daryna is an independent sociologist and consultant in strategic urban development and public engagement. Currently, she focuses on forced migration and war’s environmental impact. In the frame of Vidnova, Daryna and Olesia Moroz aim to contribute to the debate on nature conservation in times of war. They are researching the possibilities of preserving and protecting natural areas damaged, contaminated, and mined as a result of the full-scale Russian invasion. This research aims to gain insight into the conservation practices of regions contaminated by war in other countries and the existing approaches to land conservation in Ukraine

nature preservation

conservation

protection

Anatoliy Levchenko

Anatoliy Levchenko left Mariupol for Poland. He is a director, acting teacher, set designer, public figure, and human rights activist. As part of the fellowship, he is working on restoring the First Non-Governmental Theater of Donetsk Region “Terra Incognita” (Mariupol-Kyiv). In September, they are planning a performance of POSTPISNIA based on Lesia Ukrainka’s Forest Song.

social activism

theater

preservation of cultural traditions

returnees

Vira Degtiarova

Vira comes from Kharkiv and moved to Istanbul. In the frame of Vidnova Europe, she showcased exhibitions in the UNIMUSEUM Pavilion of Solidarity in the Metaverse. It highlighted various artworks created in response to the Russian war in Ukraine as a sign of support and solidarity with Ukrainians.

metaverse

art

Kateryna Pavlovska

Kateryna Pavlovska lived in Kyiv and then moved to Gdansk, Poland. She is a journalist and worked for a long time at the ICTV TV channel. Kateryna is working on a documentary film about Kyivan Rus. The purpose of the film is to explain why Kievan Rus, which was territorially located on the territory of Ukraine, was included in Russian colonial history, how the artificial concept of 3 brotherly nations was created from this, and how Russian propaganda still uses this part of history in the information war against Ukraine.

Ksenia Matskevich

Ksenia Matskevich lived in Kyiv and moved to Poland. After returning to Ukraine, she wants to prepare materials and conduct a series of offline trainings on communication, presentation of gained experience, and dissemination of information for colleagues from the public sphere and employees of state social centers.

Lab

Iryna Shapovalova

CBM

cbm.de/aktuelles/ukraine-hilfe.html

Iryna is based in Berlin and is a human rights lawyer with experience in documenting human rights violations and war crimes in eastern Ukraine since 2014. Following the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, she works as a human rights consultant for international NGOs helping Ukraine. Within Vidnova Lab Iryna and Vita Shneider investigate the private rental market in Ukraine as it accommodates most internally displaced people (IDP). They work on creating a prototype of sustainable housing solutions for IDPs.

right to housing

vulnerability

displacement

IDPs

Artur Ivanenko

Artur Ivanenko moved from Kherson to Budapest, Hungary. He is a Roma activist, policymaker, and cultural manager. As part of the fellowship, he will facilitate educational sessions on “Memory of the Roma Genocide.” Artur plans to develop methodological materials that will help in understanding the history of the genocide of Roma and Roma people and their impact on the present.

Roma activism

support for vulnerable groups

non-formal education

returnees

Svitlana Liakhovets

Lithuanian National Museum of Art

lndm.lt

Svitlana comes from Kyiv and lives in Vilnius. In the frames of the Vidnova Europe project, she made a banner exhibition about the history of Ukraine. It showed ancient times to the contemporary and about pages of shared history and the struggle of the Ukrainian and Lithuanian peoples against the Russian invaders in different historical periods. Svitlana’s host organization was the Lithuanian National Museum of Art.

art exhibition

history

Polina Choni

Polina Choni was born in Kyiv and then moved to Copenhagen, Denmark. Polina is a visual artist. She will work on the artistic research project “Chemical Reaction” and create a series of woven canvases using natural dyes. This project is dedicated to studying natural pigments from plants, mushrooms, and minerals collected on the territory of Ukraine and tells about the ecological consequences of the war.

Natalia Diachenko

Natalia Dyachenko moved to Krems am Donau, Austria, from Kyiv. She is a member of the DE NE DE art initiative and co-founder of the NGO Myzei Zakryto na Remont (Museum Open for Renovation). Now Natalia is starting to research the infrastructure and practices of recreation in the Black and Azov Seas. She will work with archival materials and vernacular photography.

commemorative practices

social activism

visual arts

returnees

Anton Zhdankin

Anton Zhdankin from Nikopol moved to Warsaw, Poland. A volunteer since the beginning of the full-scale war, he has been actively helping soldiers and people who were forced to move to safer regions. In 2022, he founded the charity projects “Creativity of the Unconquered” and “Art & Rest,” where young poets and musicians from Dnipro share their work and raise money to help the Armed Forces. More than 120 charity events have already been held.

social activism

volunteer activity

local art

returnees

Khrystyna Semeryn

Khrystyna Semeryn from Ostroh moved to Germany, where she worked at a university. She plans to create essays with intellectual reflection on war and society (“Memory Landscapes, War & Resistance Ecologies of Ukraine”, “Language of Love and Freedom”) and a series of reports on war and memory.