This year, September in the east of Ukraine has traditionally begun with the Festival of Thoughts, Donbas Intellectual Festival. This time it was held in a mixed format: online and offline, featuring two different locations.
In 2020, the Festival of Thoughts gathered more than 12,500 views of live broadcasts and about 450 listeners in “live” locations. In total, despite all quarantine restrictions, 29 discussions took place over six days featuring 160 speakers.
The online festival, which lasted from September 1 to 4, was marked by a large number of guests from the Ukrainian civil society, who had the opportunity to share their experience: representatives of the Crimean and Roma human rights groups, VoxCheck, Voxukraine, ZMINA, Donbass SOS, Crimea SOS, International Center for Defense and Security (ICDS), the British Council in Ukraine, the Foundation for Regional Initiatives, the Roma Fund Chirikli and others. All online discussions are available for viewing on the Festival page.
On September 5, many important discussions were held in the downtown area of Severodonetsk. An important part of those talks were reflections over the experience of life in long-term quarantine, such as the discussions “Coronavirus in Luhansk Region: Regional Specifics of Fight Against COVID-19”, “Education–Online: Was This Experience Useful?” and “How to Tame Your Dragons? Or How Best to Deal with Consequences of Crises and Changing Circumstances in Life”.
Topics related to the regional development were not left out either. In particular, the discussion “The path to success: is it worth the risk?” was dedicated to considering the question about how to become successful and what shall be the benchmark of success in a small provincial town. The talk “How to Develop a Community? Vision of Future Changes in Severodonetsk ”gathered people, who were eager to explore the future of our city, whereas the session “How to Make the City Attractive for Tourists?” resulted in several important solutions to improve the service in Severodonetsk.
Another popular discussion on September 5 was “Attacks on Civic Activists and Peaceful Assemblies. Human Rights Violations in Ukraine and Belarus ” with the participation of Maria Kvitsinskaya, an analyst from the Joint Action Center, and Konstantin Reutsky and Yevhen Vasyliev, representatives of the Vostok SOS Charitable Foundation, who were recently illegally detained in Belarus.
This year the festival came close to a real open dialogue between the community and the authorities. In particular, for the first time in the history of the Festival of Thoughts the heads of local administrations joined the discussions, namely: Oleksiy Babchenko, head of civil-military administration of Zolote city and Katerynivka village, Oleksandr Stryuk, head of civil-military of Severodonetsk, Yuriy Zolkin, head of Stanychno-Luhansk rayon state administration and Roman Vlasenko, head of the Popasna rayon civil-military administration.
However, the sessions featuring Sergiy Haidai as a speaker (Sergiy Haidai is head of Luhansk Oblast Civil-Military Administration) drew the most attention, in particular, two discussions on the topic of holding local elections and restoring the infrastructure in Luhansk oblast. The two sessions allowed to not only draw attention to certain problems of the region, but to also hear sometimes very outright opinions of different stakeholders and try to maintain a meaningful dialogue on controversial issues.
Despite the quarantine restrictions, foreign guests have also participated in the Festival events. The discussion “Balance Between the Digital Transformation of the Country and Cybersecurity” was attended by Kaimo Kuusk, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Estonia to Ukraine, who shared the experience of his country with the discussion participants.
The Festival of Thoughts has also featured field discussions during field trips to Lysychansk Grand Canyon (a quarry formed as a result of illegal coal mining). Such field trips were used to attract attention to this notorious “monument to corruption” and to talk about the environmental situation in the region, having an opportunity to directly observe a vivid example of an environmental catastrophe.
The Festival of Thoughts has also featured field discussions during field trips to Lysychansk Grand Canyon (a quarry formed as a result of illegal coal mining). Such field trips were used to attract attention to this notorious “monument to corruption” and to talk about the environmental situation in the region, having an opportunity to directly observe a vivid example of an environmental catastrophe.
Every year, at the end of the Festival, its organizers would find one apt phrase to summarize the entire event. This year, the phrase would be “a warm, constructive tube dialogue”.
Facebook page and on the Vostok SOS YouTube channel.
Despite all the obstacles in life, the tradition of the annual festival carries on, and more and more people seem to have joined it. In September, the Festival organizers will publish videos of offline discussions to facilitate the dialogue with their audience. The videos can be viewed on the festival’s Facebook page and on the Vostok SOS YouTube channel.
And here you can enjoy the photos conveying the mood of the Festival (photos by Denis Dimov).
The Festival of Thoughts is a platform for discussing topics important to the community. The Festival’s underlying concept is to foster a culture of exchange of ideas so that everyone can share their vision of current issues, publicly ask important questions and have experts respond to them.
The festival was supported by the International Renaissance Foundation, the Embassy of the Republic of Estonia in Ukraine, the Estonian organization Mondo, the Postup Human Rights Center and the European Commission under the EU Aid Volunteers program, as well as the Family supermarket chain.
The Festival was held with the support of the International Renaissance Foundation, Embassy of the Republic of Estonia in Ukraine, the Estonian organization Mondo, the Postup Human Rights Center and the European Commission under EU Aid Volunteers Program, as well as the Family supermarket network.
