Maker Faire Producers Talk from Kyiv About This “Strange Day”
Svitlana Bovkun and Yuri Vlasyuk are wonderful people who have been organizing Maker Faires in Ukraine in the cities of Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Lviv, and Odessa. In this interview, they share with us this “strange” day when Russia began to invade Ukraine.
“This situation is tough,” Svitlana told us. “So we are not okay. We’re not calm. We’re thinking about leaving Kyiv for the moment.” They are staying for the night but thinking of moving their children out of Kyiv and closer to Poland.
Yuri said that the “idea of building community and of producing Maker Faire was to spread the trust inside the communities.” Their goal was to change the culture, which Svitlana described as characteristic of the Soviet era: “very low trust, low initiative, low ideas rate.” She added: “at the same time, we are very hungry for ideas, startups new forms of education, especially because schools and teachers are still old school.”
Yuri said that the basic message now is “stay calm and help the army.” Yuri and Svitlana are grateful to the other producers of Maker Faire who have reached out to them, as well as the maker network they helped to build inside Ukraine.
Seeing the photos below from Maker Faires in Kyiv helps keep in mind that many people, many makers are deeply affected by this act of aggression. We will keep them in our hearts and minds.
Gallery of Photos from Maker Faires in Ukraine
Links for more info:
- Here is their website – https://makerhub.org/
- Website for Maker Faire Kyiv
- Makezine article on first event in 2015
- Here’s a nice writeup about Yuri and Svitlana from Maker Faire Rome
- Photos on Facebook Page for Kyiv Maker Faire
- MF Ukraine Instagram
- Kyiv Maker Faire on Facebook
- Kyiv Hackspace Repair Cafe
- Here’s a videos that could be embedded:
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