Fellows of Vidnova Fellowship Ukraine
The Vidnova Fellowship Ukraine is a programme to support people who went abroad with the start of the full-scale invasion and decided to return to Ukraine to be at home and resume their activities here.
This year, we support 50 fellowship holders. Filmmakers, activists, entrepreneurs, journalists, designers, psychologists, artists, and others are helping those who have been forced to move to safer regions because of the war. They are dealing with environmental issues, curating exhibitions, making documentaries, writing books, and developing IT products. It’s time to get to know them!
Solomiya Tomashchuk is a filmmaker. In the next three months, she plans to make several portrait documentaries about people who were forced to move to the Prykarpattia region from less safe cities: Mariupol, Lysychansk, Zaporizhzhia.
Marina Ryzhova is the founder and director of the independent artistic formation Art.Razom, which is engaged in staging little-known Ukrainian operas and promoting the work of young Ukrainian composers.
Polina Choni is an artist. She will work on the art project “Chemical Reaction” and create a series of woven fabrics using natural dyes. This project is dedicated to the study of natural pigments from plants, mushrooms, and minerals collected on the territory of Ukraine and tells about the environmental consequences of the war.
Alina Ponypalyak is a PhD in history. She will be working on an educational and exhibition project dedicated to the heroes of the defence of the Kyiv region called “Kyiv Region — An Outpost to Freedom”. It aims to show how the army, together with citizens, repelled the enemy’s attack.
Tetiana Korzhova is an artist, plans to open an art studio to teach children and adults painting from nature, as well as hold an exhibition dedicated to the nature of the Kinburn spit – the territory that is still under Russian occupation.
Lyubov Malikova is an artist and designer, representing the DIS/ORDER creative collective. One of the important areas of design is collaboration with artists. For this season, she will be collaborating with Ksenia Hnylytska and Nikita Kadan for the serial project KHUSTKA.
Valentina Prytula is a ceramist. She plans to hold workshops, that will be free of charge (for people in need of therapy and assistance), as well as open up free space for other ceramic artists to work.
After returning to Ukraine, Ksenia Matskevich wants to prepare materials and conduct a series of offline trainings on communication, presentation of experience and dissemination of information for women workers in the public sector and state social centres.
Alina Bohdanovych is an actress, director, theatre scholar, cultural manager, and teacher. She is planning to realise her own play “Song of Freedom”, a podcast about culture and art “I-Culture”, and to resume the activities of the NGO “Platform of Theatre Initiatives”.
Teresa Barabash is an artist who works with textiles, installation, audiovisual art and land art. She is planning to work on a series of thematic paintings dedicated to the work of Polina Rayko (a Ukrainian artist from the Kherson region whose house-museum was flooded after the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station was exploded).
Daryna Antonenko is the founder of the upcycling agency Re:ban, which gives a second life to used advertising banners by making unique custom-made craft products from them — bags, bananas, backpacks, laptop cases.
Kateryna Strelhenko is a filmmaker, plans to resume the activities of the “Interesting Cinema” club, which was run by children and teenagers who want to connect their lives with journalism and film production.
Taras Prodanyuk is an entrepreneur. He will be re-launching a think tank to help organisations make data-driven decisions. He also plans to work with Ukrainian businesses to conduct research on the current state of the Ukrainian economy and the viability of SMEs.
Kateryna Pavlovska is a film director working on a documentary about Kyivan Rus. The film will explore the history of the creation of the artificial concept of three fraternal nations and how this part of history is still used by Russian propaganda in its information war against Ukraine.
Khrystyna Slobodyaniuk is an actress, dancer, and performer. She plans to study art therapy, improve mental health among her existing and new audiences, and create performances and videos, which are designed to heal the audience in Ukraine.
Iryna Yatsyk is the founder and director of the PROSTO Non-Formal Education Centre (Zhytomyr), and she is a psychotherapist. Iryna is working to reopen the centre to train young people and children in civic education.
Olha Solovyova returned to Ukraine to work with her students from the Children’s Academy of Arts and organise free drawing workshops. She has already opened a solo exhibition, participated in two collective exhibitions, and plans to take part in a charity auction.
Tamila Pedan is an artist who will be working on the eco-art project “Transformation” using recycling and upcycling technologies. Artists who have participated in Tamila’s previous exhibitions will teach 75 people eco-art techniques at a series of workshops.
Alina Neskreba is a sound engineer and sound designer. In her project Modern Ukrainian Audio Fairy Tales, she will adapt Ukrainian folk tales to the interests of modern children. She plans to make fairy tales in Ukrainian and English.
Maria Kondratieva is a choreographer, performer, teacher and cultural event organiser. During the fellowrship, she plans to work on her own dance performance “Fragility”, plan to open a space for contemporary dance and performance artists, and conduct workshops on body and dance practices.
Hanna Lodygina is a journalist, will work on recording 8 episodes of the podcast about the decolonisation of Ukrainian culture and science, “Back to Ourselves”. Each episode will be dedicated to a prominent Ukrainian figure who was appropriated by Russia.
Liudmyla Mishchenko is a psychologist, plans to create a space in Zaporizhzhia or Dnipro where she will hold paper-casting workshops. She also wants to organise women’s circles and film screenings once a week.
Olena Kasian is an entrepreneur and founder of OKTOWN.com.ua. She is working on the restoration and expansion of the OKTOWN project, as well as the development of a mobile application to support the tourism business in Ukraine.
Iryna Savytska is a co-founder of the Ukrainian startup “Bank of Memories” and a member of the activist organisation Memories of Ukraine. Together with her husband, the Bank of Memories project creates digital memorials for the heroes who died in the Russian-Ukrainian war. These are short films that can be viewed directly from the memorial plaque using a smartphone.
Stay tuned — we will tell you about the second half of our fellowship winners soon! The programme is implemented by Insha Osvita in partnership with Commit by MitOst gGmbH and with the support of the Robert Bosch Stiftung.
