From the director:
Project "What is your history?": summing up
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- Category: News
Together with October 2020, the exciting project "What is your history?" was completed. It was implemented for six months by Zaporizhzhya scientific society named after Yakiv Novytskiy with the support of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The project focuses on promoting the history of three cities (Zaporizhzhya, Berdyansk and Melitopol).
Remember some activities and results of this project in Berdyansk.
One of the main platforms of the project was the page "What is your history?" in Facebook. For six months, there have been 104 posts relating to Berdyansk.
Among them 39 posts are about the events of the project in Berdyansk and 65 posts are with historical photos and family histories. 726 historical photos were published in them.
In particular, there are several hundred photos, especially for the project scanned in the funds of the Research Institute of Urban History and Museum of History of BSPU. Moreover, the project "What is your history?" handed a scanner to the Research Institute of Urban History with the help of which a number of pictures of the 1970s and early 1980s from the Museum of BSPU was digitized.
It is more important that dozens of Berdyansk residents responded to the project organizers' call, brought old photos and recorded their family histories, including BSPU Rector Igor Bogdanov, representatives of university administration and teaching staff such as Olga Gurenko, Irina Nagai, Kateryna Dudorona, Olena Martynenko, Oleksandr Golik and many others. Students-historians (among them the most active are Oleksiy Stepin, Vladislava Protsenko, Alina Nesterenko) found in Berdyansk and outside it graduates of our university who agreed to give their photos for the project and record oral history interviews.
523 photos were provided to the project under the signed transfer acts.
At the same time on the page "What is your history?" historical photos of Berdyansk and its residents and guests, found by non-Berdyansk members of the project team, are also presented. On the other hand, Berdyansk regional project coordinator Victoria Konstantinova gave a number of photos related to the history of Zaporizhzhya.
On the page "What is your history?" in Facebook there are also videos with digitized newsreels of Berdyansk which are stored in the Central State Archive of Film, Photo, and Phonographic Documents of Ukraine named after H. Pshenychniy and State Archives of Zaporizhzhya region (the latter ones were discovered by the staff of the Research Institute of Urban History 7 years ago but presented for the first time within the project).
On June 5, Igor Lyman and Victoria Konstantinova gave an online lecture "Photo History of the Greeks of Berdyansk" as part of the project which was visited online in Zoom by only about 70 viewers/listeners but in just two days there were more than 1.6 thousands of viewers (in total, we currently have more than 2,200 views of this lecture).
On July 25, the street exhibition "Photohistories of Berdyansk Port" was organized on Gorkiy Street not far from the sea. The lecture "Berdyansk as a "second Odessa ": unfulfilled hopes" was delivered (Igor Lyman).
On July 26, Schmidt Park hosted the street exhibition "The Incredible Old Berdyansk" and the excursion "Center of Old Berdyansk" was organized (Igor Lyman).
On August 22, the street exhibition "Unique Berdyansk" was held on Primorska Square, and the excursion "Berdyansk Makhnovskiy" (Igor Lyman) was held in the city center.
September 17, on City Day, a large History Fest was organized in Berdyansk by the project "What's your history?", within the framework of which more than one and a half dozen different events were held at 5 locations. Among them is a public lecture "Urban History of Berdyansk: a view from the sea" which was read by Igor Lyman on a "pirate" ship moved along Berdyansk Bay; lectures in the courtyard of the main building of BSPU "Women on the Move: Berdyansk context" (Igor Lyman) and "Myths and reality of urban space" (Victor Brekhunenko). In the street cinema hall, arranged in Schmidt Park, after the demonstration of the lecture "Virtual image of the city" of Vladislav Berkovskiy, director of the Central State Film and Photo Archive of Ukraine named after H. Pshenychnyi, were shown unique newsreels of Berdyansk of the twentieth century, specially digitized for the project "What is your history?". The interventions "Historical map of Berdyansk" and "Berdyansk, what are you like?"(Karina Fursa); game "Monopoly. Old Town" which was specially developed and made by the project on the basis of historical materials of Berdyansk, Oleksandrivsk (Zaporizhzhya) and Melitopol (Iryna Bila and Natalia Lobach); quest geocaching "What is your history?" (Irina Bila); workshops "Collage "Create your Berdyansk" and "I am the best guide" (Natalia Lobach) became part of the festival. Together with the NGO "Spilno HUB" and the Berdyansk Cycling Club an event "Berdyansk Bicycle: Past and Present" was held with participation of Victoria Konstantinova.
On September 17-24, students-historians Vladislava Protsenko, Alina Nesterenko, Ilona Yagodkina and Anna Kaira held a marathon of 24 excursions in the Museum of History of BSPU, organized for all first year students of the university.
In the last days of the project, at the end of October, a stationary photo exhibition was set up along the path between the pines in the courtyard of the main building of BSPU. On the stands there are old photos of Berdyansk, family histories of its inhabitants collected during the six months of the project.
On each of the three language versions (Ukrainian, English and Russian) of the website of the Research Institute of Urban History in the section "Projects" a directory "What is your history?" was created. The directory contains hyperlinks to all news, articles, etc. related to the project in Berdyansk.
We also add the popularization of the project during conferences organized at BSPU, book presentations as well as an exhibition dedicated to the 50th anniversary of Volodymyr Ivasyuk song "Chervona Ruta" (because the famous composer's mother studied at the Berdyansk (Osypenko) Teaching Institute).
Part of the sources on the history of Berdyansk received from the citizens during the project is planned to be stored in the funds of the Central State Film and Photo Archive of Ukraine named after H. Pshenychniy, the rest ones will be in collections of Zaporizhzhya scientific society named after Yakiv Novytskiy and Research Institute of Urban History.
It is pleasant and symbolic that Petro Boyko who is the manager of the project "What is your history?" and son of the founder of Zaporizhzhya scientific society named after Yakiv Novytskiy has just won the award for achievements in local lore named after Yakiv Novytskiy in the nomination "for active promotion of history and culture".
