Razom is happy to announce that with the support of our donors and volunteers we were able to sponsor the transportation of 20 artists participating in the Galicia Cult festival in Kharkiv that ran Oct. 2-18, 2016.
Galicia Cult is a multidisciplinary social-cultural forum that aims to introduce eastern Ukrainians to modern western-Ukrainian culture. Besides promoting a cultural exchange, the forum also intends to break common stereotypes in both the east and the west.
The organizer of the forum, Olga Sahaidak, the founder of DOFA Fund, said that despite the “significantly different mentality and culture,” the east and west of the country urgently need to get to know each other better. She said Lviv and Kharkiv were cities with similarities, such as locals crossing the border to work in a neighboring country, and both were religious areas – although of different denominations. “We believe that having a lot of distinct regions is actually one of Ukraine’s virtues – one that we should be proud of and learn about,” Sahaidak said.
The forum’s program – the result of collaboration among curators, artists, scholars and cultural activists from west and east of Ukraine and EU partners will include over 80 cultural events in several segments: visual art (8 exhibitions), music (5 big concerts), theater (6 spectacles), literature (17 meetings), film (16 films), lecture & discussion program (14 meetings) with a focus on different histories, identities and cultures of cities in western Ukraine and eastern Ukraine (represented by Kharkiv in the northeast).
The 2 week event brought in some 11,000 visitors. About 300 artists from the west of Ukraine participated in Galicia Cult, majority of them were visiting eastern Ukraine for the first time.
Art installation by Sergiy Petlyuka and Oleksa Horoshka “Exchange” was the favorite place for Instagram photos.
Check out photos of Galicia Cult festivities and a video of the final concert, where the Youth Academic Symphony Orchestra “Slobozhansky” (Kharkiv) played with the rock group The Plastic People of the Universe (Czech Republic) in an old circus in Kharkiv here.
Want to know when is the next DOFA Fund event? Follow them on facebook.
