Zatyshok/Gezelligheid

Zatyshok/Gezelligheid by Ukrainian School ‘Dzherelo’ in Amsterdam, Ukrainians in the Netherlands Foundation

Dzherelo, a Ukrainian heritage school and cultural center in Amstelveen, launches the “Zatyshok/Gezelligheid” project to help raise the visibility of Ukrainian culture. They involve different European communities living in the Netherlands to workshops, exhibits and talks around the beauty of a strikingly modern-looking wintertime straw decoration “pavuk” (spider).

They see this artefact, with its fragile yet flexible and interwoven parts, as a symbol of solidarity within Europe, and the importance of fostering it. By getting together around the winter holidays with their partners to make the “pavuk”, they want to turn this cosy activity into an opportunity to get to know Ukraine and one another better and talk about what makes us unique and what values we share. They will discuss the renewed interest in traditional art, especially among young Ukrainian creatives and intellectuals as a way to rediscover their culture as a therapeutic undoing of centuries of Russian colonialism. By drawing parallels with other similar winter traditions in other European cultures, the “himmeli” in Finland, and the “pająki” in Poland, for example, they want to highlight Ukraine’s embeddedness in European culture.

Lida Zangarten will facilitate these workshops, while in December Olena Braichenko travels from Ukraine to deliver a lecture about “the forward-looking nature of traditional culture revival in today’s Ukraine: Decolonization and liberal democratic values,” based on her recent book “Ukraine: Food and History”, published together with the Ukrainian Institute.

Granted: 9.000 euros