CSM

On July 4 CSM launches social and artistic project Holidays On the Block in Poznyaky park. We reviewed almost 30 applications to choose 11 most interesting projects. During one month artists, activists, sociologists, photographs, and journalists will work together with Poznyaky district residents to come up with a common vision for the city and their district.

Art can be a reliable social instrument to hear the others, to share values and to learn together to change lives through common action. Each project will speak to local residents – to mothers, teenagers, private entrepreneurs, government officials, random passers-by, it will speak about the ways art can help to change the environment. Within the framework of the project participants of researchers’ practicum will create Poznyaky Portrait, an image of the place as the residents see it.

Poznyaky is a typical sleeping district in Kyiv, a new and dynamic part of town, where the city infrastructure develops actively. Image and character of Poznyaky changed significantly after Maidan, since activist groups of self-defense and civic control have been launched here (as in many other parts of town). However, alienation between people and the space, where they live and which they usually do not see as public, is still present. In Holidays on... Poznyaky we will learn together how to bridge this alienation, how to “bring” the city to its citizens.

How to fill all 12 libraries and 2 cinemas, spaces around abandoned lakes, playgrounds around apartment blocks and waste grounds with creative actions of Poznyaky residents? How to prove that art can change the country and not only during revolutions? Where does the country start – from your yard, district, from the left or from the right bank of Dnipro river? Where is contemporary art born – in an artist studio, in a laptop or on the fence? During the month of July participants of Holidays On the Block in their own individual ways will work with these questions. Results of research and common creative work can be seen at the end of July in Poznyaky park and Fakel cinema.

Project participants are: Mariam Agamyan, Tekla Aslanishvili (resident from Georgia), Oleksandr Dolhiy, Alevtina Kakhidze, Аlina Kopytsya, Yulia Kostereva, Irina Kostyshina,  Yevhen Kotenko, Yuriy Kruchak,  Maria Kulykivska, art-group МММ (Oleksandr Dolhiy, Dmytro Korniyenko, Yuriy Pikul, Georgiy Potopalskiy, Mykyta Naslimov, Vitalia Kalmutska), Kateryna Mishchuk, Nadia Parfan, Teta Tsybulnyk and El Parvulesco), Ksenia Utievska together with Petro Vladimirov, Larysa Ishchenko, Yevhen Kazak and Lina Romanukha, Darya Tsymbalyuk, Oksana Shynkarenko and Victor  Ruban as well as creative initiatives from Laska charity store, photographer Alina Kondratenko, «Bokmal», «BaraBooka» and others.

Follow the schedule on the Facebook page for Holidays On the Block 

Partiсipation is free.

Find more about project results in the publication "Art in the City: Connections and Gaps".

Holidays On the Block is a project supported by Heinrich Böll Foundation’s Office in Kyiv. It is a part of the international three-year project SPACES, funded by the European Union through the Eastern Partnership Culture Programme. Project partners Leroy Мerlin (Brovarsky Ave, 3B), Caparol-Ukraine, Laska charity store.