Цілі і цінності культурної платформи Ковчег "Україна"

The Ark Ukraine is a project about initiation.
As if a capsule launched into space, it houses essential information.
Like the starter dough a grandmother leaves in her bowl for the next generation’s bread. Like the pearls of traditional treasures a young woman commits to her hope chest. These are the greatest grains from the granary.

The Tree of Life is often embroidered on traditional Ukrainian wedding cloths. Alongside this Tree are two birds who guard the Flower of Life. Like these birds, we seek to protect what is at the very core of Ukraine’s unique tree and preserve the ancient purity of this flower even in this age of cosmic odyssey.

This is why we have gathered our treasures aboard The ARK "Ukraine" — as a means of preserving the seeds of Ukraine’s cultural harvests so that they may be the pillars upon which Ukraine’s future will be built. We invite you to board this boat- museum, and discover Ukraine.

Inspired by the traditional, we create new things - iconic art projects that will become Ukraine's "cultural visiting cards" in the world.

We are a team of creators with a global mindset and a taste for the local - art managers and curators, collectors and scholars, producers and writers, musicians and artists who are united by a love for this land and for the real (non-artificial) - hand-made, unique and alive, and who strive to tell the world exclusive stories about Ukraine.

The initiators and founders of the platform are Yaryna Vynnytska and Dmytro Osypov. The project was co-created by Taras Lozynsky, a collector and founder of the Lviv Institute of Collecting, artist Ostap Lozynsky, and brought together Ukrainian poet Serhiy Zhadan, the world-famous DakhaBrakha band, as well as the IT company EDpro, the Film.ua production studio, and many others.

We cherish THE TRADITIONAL, and therefore we have created

kovcheh.ua – an online resource that will become a virtual treasury of the nation: we will open to the public what was hidden in museum collections and chests - more than a thousand high-quality artifacts - masterpieces of traditional art and professional painting, the best tracks of Ukrainian musical heritage, etc. The cultural capital of the country will be stored here.

We create NEW projects:

conceptual concerts that open the "musical archives" of Ukraine to a wide range of listeners - in innovative formats, through the synthesis of traditional and classical music, multimedia installations and theatrical performances
gift art books and photo albums about the cultural heritage of Ukraine, which have already become Ukraine's visiting cards
innovative exhibitions - we present iconic cultural artifacts of Ukraine ithrough the language of contemporary art and new technologies

Values of Cultural platform The Ark Ukraine:

Authenticity: for us, tradition is not about "worshiping ashes, but passing on fire" to the next generations. We have received a great heritage - all that Ukrainians have created over the millennia of their existence, and also their love and pain; now it is our responsibility to preserve, multiply and pass on the national treasure.
Relevance: We strive to change cultural stereotypes about Ukraine, to abandon old clichés of "salo and horilka" and to bring to the forefront new iconic cultural artefacts with which our country can be associated via contemporary art.
Thoroughness: The Ark Ukraine is a sign of quality. This means that everything loaded on board is of the highest quality.
Cultural diversity: Ukrainians are a polyphonic nation. And the only chance to preserve the polyphony of the world is for everyone to cherish their own culture, at the same time cultivating respect for the other and creating new opportunities for mutual enrichment of cultures.

The goals of The Ark Ukraine are as follows:

to preserve and enhance the cultural heritage of Ukraine
to create high-quality competitive Ukrainian cultural products that combine the traditional and the innovative, the archaic and the modern in such sectors of the creative industries as book publishing, music, cinema, exhibition, and education
to foster in Ukrainians a sense of belonging to their own culture and history
to ensure systematic promotion of Ukrainian cultural "treasures" on the world stage and to form the brand of Ukraine as a country with a rich original culture

The Ark Ukraine is about an instinct of self-preservation.

We want to preserve our genius loci - local guardian spirits of this land. Ukrainians are a polyphonic nation. We are incredibly rich within the Ukrainian nation itself - highlanders Hutsuls, Polishchuks from borderline with Belarus, Slobozhans from wide steppe, Galicians from Western Ukrainian capital of Lviv, Poltavians from the heart of Ukraine Poltava etc - each with their own dialects, recipes, traditions, and mentality. Therefore The Ark "Ukraine" contains Hutsul's Koliada, Poltavian polyphony singing, as well as trinity wooden candelabras from Pokuttya, carpets of Reshetylivka, and Krolevets ritual cloths.

Our little geniuses of place, hidden in the local traditions of each town and village, together form the unique polyphonic sound of this land. It is our primary duty to save, protect and include them in the large all-Ukrainian The Red Book of genius loci, to provide them "access to the microphone" - the opportunity to tell the world their own little local truth; to preserve the unique cultural codes so as not to dissolve in the globalization flood, and to pass them on to create a new modern Ukrainian culture that will grow from its own roots.

For a multicultural world to remain multicultural, everyone needs to cherish their own culture.