IZONE is a creative community giving open access to all studios. The hub's centre is located in a 4-floor building that includes exhibition spaces, a lecture room, conference/meeting places, concert/performance venues, a maker space, studios, a shop, a café and indoor/outdoor communal spaces.
The hub’s history
We have two organisations, one is the foundation established in 2010 and then the hub is a separate entity established in 2014. Obviously, the building now is not working because of the war. Since the beginning of COVID19, it was not very active because we were developing new strategies that soon became irrelevant. But the organisation is still working really actively and doing a lot of work, it is focused quite strongly on cultural decentralisation. As the director, I am responsible for both of them, so I will speak about them as one. The Foundation was established in 2010 in the East of Ukraine, in a former materials factory, and it was the only independent cultural institution in the whole region of Western Ukraine.
We needed to come up with another strategy for funding, because our founder used to be a businesswoman in Donetsk, but her factories were stolen by the Russians.
Probably all around Ukraine, you couldn’t find any other kind of independent cultural organisation with such a diverse program. There were already some galleries or cultural organisations but none of them was proposing a large range of activities and could be considered a hub. The Foundation was established in 2010 but became active in 2011.In 2012, we opened the first FabLab. We developed the idea in one year, aiming to have an
In 2012, we opened the first FabLab. We developed the idea in one year, aiming to have an economic impact on the city built on its industry, which was mostly declining. We wanted to develop new opportunities and education, because local authorities were not interested in anything else other than coal mining and metal factories. We wanted to provide an alternative. When we opened our FabLab, many students started to work with local companies and people from different backgrounds started to use our equipment and join educational programmes. Unfortunately, with the invasion we lost the space and had to move to Kyiv. In Kyiv, we relocated and started a new project in a shipyard, which we turned into a full-scale creative hub, a plan that was already developed for Donetsk. We needed to come up with another strategy for funding, because our founder used to be a businesswoman in Donetsk, but her factories were stolen by the Russians.
This new project and the current political situation led to a new funding strategy and then a new economic model. We received support for consultations from the European Union and collaborated with an advisor from the Ministry of Culture.
From 2014, until COVID19 in 2018, we have had a working model with artistic studios with a free program of cultural activities, galleries and a big space dedicated to events. Around 50 members, individuals and companies were involved. Then COVID19 started and we lost the opportunity to do any public events or use spaces for workshops, so it was shut down for a year.
In 2014, the first building was seized by Russians when they took over the city. First, they took over the governmental buildings and then they came to us. It was on June 6th. This territory belongs to them now. Unfortunately, as we found out later, this territory is still right now used as an illegal prison. Which means that it’s not recognised by local authorities. No one knows when someone is taken there. It's a secret. People who were released or managed to escape gave some testimonies and it’s a really horrible place where people are being tortured or executed. This is a huge transformation, from a factory to a creative hub to a horrible torture place. For years, we have been trying to bring attention to this through international communications, international organisations, embassies, governments of different countries, but unfortunately, it still remains like this at the moment.
Our main idea was that we are building an inclusive and participative space.
On the first day, we managed to get some stuff from there, mostly artworks. Basically, all the equipment, everything was lost. When we moved to Kyiv we had to start from scratch. That’s shocking. I mean, from a cultural place to becoming a prison, it’s extremely shocking. We made a website about it. There’s a couple of books and films about it. We are trying to bring as much attention to it as possible.
Why did you choose to base your hub in this area?
There was a renowned architect working with us from London, a friend of our founder who was mainly working on the rehabilitation of industrial spaces in London and proposed the plan to rehabilitate our building in Donetsk. When we came to Kyiv, we also invited him to think about how we can choose the place. Based on the map, he suggested using this area since it’s really close to the city centre and subway stations from the main square. It’s part of the old industrial district.
The main issue was that the venue was part of a strongly secured factory. We thought then that it would be nice to collaborate with the existing workshops such as wood working, plastic and fixing motorcycles. These are basically the main reasons that increased our interest in this place. When we went there, we discovered the space was already rent by a couple of organisations that were using it for storage of some smuggled goods, which were stopped by border police. It took around two more years to negotiate with the previous tenants, help them find another place and finally in 2017, we managed to have all four floors. The father of our founder’s organisation was the director of the initial factory for a long time. He worked there from the very start of the factory in 196, to his retirement. The owner already had a lot of emotional connection to the space. Around 2005, it went bankrupt, closed down and all the spaces were mostly used as warehouses, rented for little money. The founder decided to invest back into this place and think about how we could revitalise industrial spaces.
In 2010, we organised a big conference where we invited people from European organisations that revitalised cultural spaces and Ukrainian experts to discuss the industrial future of the region. Despite the lack of interest from the local authorities, our founder decided to invest in the project and this is how it started in 2010. Our main idea was that we are building an inclusive and participative space. We started the project with residencies involving local communities into the process.
One of our first projects was with a Chinese artist who invited local artists to draw portraits of coal miners and miners from salt mines. Then he put gunpowder on top of them and put them on fire. It was really spectacular. It was a big production, involving local organisations and local people. In 2013, we already had three exhibition venues, a cinema, a FabLab, collaborations with many artists and local organisations as well as international institutions such as Dutch organisations and the British Council but also individuals looking for support.
The father of our founder’s organisation was the director of the initial factory for a long time. He worked there from the very start of the factory in 196, to his retirement. The owner already had a lot of emotional connection to the space. Around 2005, it went bankrupt, closed down and all the spaces were mostly used as warehouses, rented for little money. The founder decided to invest back into this place and think about how we could revitalise industrial spaces. In 2010, we organised a big conference where we invited people from European organisations that revitalised cultural spaces and Ukrainian experts to discuss the industrial future of the region. Despite the lack of interest from the local authorities, our founder decided to invest in the project and this is how it started in 2010.
Our main idea was that we are building an inclusive and participative space. We started the project with residencies involving local communities into the process. One of our first projects was with a Chinese artist who invited local artists to draw portraits of coal miners and miners from salt mines. Then he put gunpowder on top of them and put them on fire. It was really spectacular. It was a big production, involving local organisations and local people. In 2013, we already had three exhibition venues, a cinema, a FabLab, collaborations with many artists and local organisations as well as international institutions such as Dutch organisations and the British Council but also individuals looking for support.
What did you manage to (re)build in your territory? What's the current situation after the Russian invasion?
This is a nice opportunity to talk about the past situation before the Russian invasion and the current situation. Before 2010, there was no community of active people in Donetsk that would go to events. The ‘90s and beginning of 2000s were quite complicated times in this region and only the new generation was in a slightly better economic situation. Somewhere around 2005, we started to have a bigger number of young people who would be able to go somewhere and be active. We never had the space to do anything by ourselves, especially in Donetsk, where there were not many things going on, even though it used to be a city with one million inhabitants. There was not a similar space for young people and when we started working, it became really important that people could come and participate in everything. A lot of people we invited to our events or to our projects became independent artists, producers or professional architects and have their own organisations now.
We bought a bus and turned it into a mobile cultural space.
By the end of our work in Donetsk, people started to build alternative spaces, which was also great. It was a big catalyst of changes in the region. Approximately in 2018-2019 we started working with cultural decentralisation. This is when we decided that we don’t really want to work in Kyiv because Kyiv is the capital, and there are already many things going on, so we are not really needed there. Again, it was a really lucky coincidence that we were invited by the American embassy to think about some projects they could fund. We bought a bus and turned it into a mobile cultural space. We took most of the seats out and installed a system to hang pictures, projectors, sound systems, screens, tables and started to travel around the country. We had an open call that asked organisations to apply for our arrival. The first condition was that applicants needed to have an organisation. The second condition was that the organisation had to provide half of the programme. We wouldn’t just randomly come, but they would prepare something for us. We also asked them about their own interests and concerns and would help them design their programme, lectures, talks, workshops so they had a lot of engagement. The bus visited around 30 cities in one season, then COVID19 started again, the travels were postponed until the following summer. The whole bus initiative ended with a film programme, going to smaller cities in eastern Ukraine, showing open-air films, on the side of the bus. This is how we started our decentralisation efforts.
After the bus, we decided to move to a small city in eastern Ukraine and to do our work there. From a region where no one is interested in culture and in general prefers staying at home, remaining as invisible as possible, suddenly everyone wanted to be involved in this park project. It was a really great change. This actually involved developing new economic models for the city of Soledar. At the end of 2021, we were awarded a 1.000.000 euro grant from the European Commission to reconstruct the local house of culture and design a program within it. The idea behind this was to create a local cultural hub to invite people from the entire region to produce anything they wanted.
What we are doing is that we act as official representatives of territorial communities in Ukraine for official requests to the European community for governmental bodies.
We also wanted to have a council to represent the locals and the program was designed in a way that in the first year we would be helping them and the representatives of the house of culture to run their programmes and the following year they would do it themselves under our supervision. By the third year they would be experienced with connections and an understanding of cultural and financial management, programming etc. Again, unfortunately, this was never implemented because this house of culture was destroyed by missiles in the spring. We hope to be able to implement this kind of programme soon.
How do you envision the future?
At the moment we are doing three things. Last year, after we understood that we were notable to implement our project, we contacted the EU Commission and they allowed us to change the grant into a humanitarian aid programme. We hired a director and transferred a team to a new department called humanitarian help. What we are doing is that we act as official representatives of territorial communities in Ukraine for official requests to the European community for governmental bodies.
We are focused on working with people who were forced to move because their homes were occupied, finding shelter and transportation. Last year, the team helped create around 5% of all the shelters in Ukraine. Our connections with the small communities were really helpful to implement the project.
Additionally, talking about support, we started supporting artists. We negotiated to use a part of the grant to support cultural organisations or artists with the only condition that the funded cultural projects would help and engage displaced people. We funded around 50 projects with this programme, which was quite a lot. The national cultural foundation of Ukraine lost its funding, as it was inevitably moved to the Ministry of Defence when the war started, so we became one of the biggest funding organisations and supported quite a lot of projects last year. We funded separate projects working with people affected by the war.
During spring 2022, when the war had just started, we organised workshops for children in small cities in west Ukraine that welcomed many internally displaced people and we tried to support local artists with equipment and tools. We went into international cultural diplomacy, in order to support projects abroad.
This year, we signed an agreement with Creative Europe, so we will support Ukrainian cultural institutions and European organisations that want to collaborate with them in the upcoming years. There are a large number of dedicated projects ahead that will implement cultural diplomacy, residencies and a programme that will develop European Cultural organisations to accommodate Ukrainian cultural professionals or artists.
Spotlight Practice: Mobile Labs
Most people on our team are still in Ukraine. The person who started our FabLab in 2012 works on a project of mobile FabLabs, where they install FabLabs inside trucks and they help people in small communities. This is something you can of course scale to other situations, not only within war refugees. It can be interesting for organisations that want to work in smaller communities anywhere, which might feel disconnected. It has a lot of potential, as it can be really useful in many places around Europe. That’s truly important for people who live in remote locations.
Mykhailo Glubokyi, Development Director of the Izolyatsia Foundation. Mykhailo explained the situation after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and proved through Izone’s activities how culture and creativity can bring light to the dark times of his country.
