Donbas in Focus: Visions of Industry in the Ukrainian East

The history and heritage of industrialization can evoke conflicting emotions for local communities. While past industrial achievements can be a source of community identity and pride, the environmental impact of industrialization and the socio-economic challenges of de-industrialization can also affect negatively the lives of local residents. Regeneration projects have tended to focus on adaptive re-use of industrial heritage objects, as museums, tourist attractions, galleries, and community spaces, in an effort to revitalize economically depressed areas and strengthen local communities. Less attention, however, has been paid to the intangible heritage of industrialization: the culture, values and relationships that exist in communities that were invested materially and symbolically in industrial production.

Donbas in Focus: Visions of Industry in the Ukrainian East explores the ways that Donbas, a heavily industrialized region in Eastern Ukraine, was depicted in photography and film across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and asks how these processes continue to resonate in the region's political and cultural landscapes today. Situating the Donbas case in a comparative research frame, it questions established notions of the region's post-Soviet specificity, highlighting common challenges and experiences in post-industrial regions and communities across the UK. While a number of recent studies have begun to address the question of Donbas's cultural construction through word, image and social practice, there is no one single-authored volume in Ukrainian, Russian, or English that engages with the politics of visualizing industry in the Ukrainian East and the ways these politics have informed the cultural myth of Donbas across the Soviet and post-independence eras. A study of this kind is now more urgent than ever given the ongoing conflict in Donbas, in the context of which marked tendencies to "Otherize" the heavily industrialized region have emerged. By drawing parallels with the cultural construction of (post-)industrial regions across the UK, the project will contribute valuable new perspectives to the debate about Donbas identity politics, shifting the focus away from questions of ethnolinguistic identities, which have dominated Ukrainian public discourse and international media coverage of the conflict, to discuss the dynamics of power that shape and inform (post-)industrial regional subjectivities and experiences.

Donbas in Focus has the following component parts: 1) a monograph, the first sustained study of the practices and traditions of visualizing industry in Donbas, from the late-Imperial period to the present day; 2) a co-edited volume of artwork, photography, and critical essays reflecting on the critical-creative potential of industrial history and heritage; 3) a series of three industrial archive workshops, stimulating new forms of creativity around established industrial heritage collections and building the knowledge, capacities, and networks of professionals working with these resources; 4) a schools photography project, working with young people in the West Lothian area to develop a new body of photographic work that engages with the (post-)industrial landscape; 5) an exhibition of project photography and creative work that will tour the UK and Ukraine; 6) a radio broadcast for BBC Radio 3; 7) a project website.

Non-academic beneficiaries of the research include:

1) Museums and archives. The project will benefit Gwent Archives, Ebbw Vale Works Museum, Redhills: Durham Miners Hall, Durham Mining Museum, Durham County Record Office, West Lothian Archives and Museums Services, Linlithgow Museum, and the Museum of the Scottish Oil Shale Industry, all of whom will contribute to the industrial archives workshop series. The workshops will model new forms of creative engagement with industrial heritage and will stimulate discussion about how to reach new public audiences, including difficult-to-reach constituencies (such as teenagers), effectively. The workshops will build professional networks and capacities through mobility and exchange, hopefully leading to ideas for collaborative projects and future funding bids. Local community participation at the workshop will provide museums and archive staff with an opportunity to engage potential new users and depositors;

2) Artists and creative practitioners. A primary aim of this project is to challenge established stereotypes of post-industrial regions by encouraging interactions between artists and local communities with first-hand experience of post-industrial transformation. The six artists participating in the workshops will work in a sustained way with industrial heritage collections, innovating their own creative responses to the materials and supporting workshop participants with their creative initiatives. As a result of participation in the workshops, artists will build their professional portfolios and benefit from networks with academics, museums, archives, international partner institutions and public audiences. While most of the artists have been involved in projects relating to industrial and post-industrial themes before, not all have had the opportunity to engage communities in participatory art initiatives. The workshops will therefore provide an opportunity for artists with experience in this area to mentor early career colleagues in publicly engaged forms of creative practice;

3) Schools and schoolchildren. The schools photography project will provide schoolchildren with an opportunity to build practical and creative skills around photography and broaden their understanding of their local history and environment. The Skillswork sessions and field trips will allow students to develop relationships with artists and photographers, stimulating creativity and confidence. Schoolchildren will be empowered to create new visual narratives of their communities that will be exhibited internationally. The schools photography project will be co-designed with teachers and schoolchildren to maximize participant investment in the initiative;

4) Public audiences. The project aims to change public perceptions of the cultural potential of post-industrial regions by exhibiting new forms of creativity emerging from these communities. An exhibition of project photography and creative work produced by professional artists and community participants at the industrial archive workshops and schools photography project will be exhibited in dedicated venues in Ebbw Vale, Durham, West Lothian, Lviv and Kyiv. The exhibition will be accompanied by project talks and contextualizing information to facilitate public engagement with the topic. Project partners will promote the exhibition through local networks and media to maximize its reach in the local community. Opportunities will be sought for further dissemination of project outputs through local networks and institutions (e.g. follow-on exhibitions across Donbas through the Gurtobus, community culture bus project run by IZOLYATSIA: Platform for Cultural Initiatives; integration of project materials into Shale Trail interactive database).