The city through people's stories: how the "Understanding Space" weekend intensive of our students concluded together with the youth of Vasyl Stefanyk KNU
On November 8, the second day of our project took place, which turned into a lively walking exploration, where there were no classic lectures, but only a sincere dialogue between the students of our faculty and the youth from Vasyl Stefanyk Precarpathian National University.
We met in the very center of Frankivsk. Local participants shared stories of landmarks, and we all discussed the features of our regional cuisines and, inevitably, our shared pain and the consequences of the war.
Our lunch at Urban Space 100 became a true platform for discussions. We talked about urbanism and revitalization (mentioning our native Kherson Urban Cad!), spatial orientation, and the interesting etymology of district names in our cities. There, on the establishment's shelves, we came across Bohdan Lohvynenko's book «Deoccupation». This was a very poignant moment: our live stories as eyewitnesses resonated surprisingly deeply and were in harmony with the testimonies that researchers have carefully collected on the pages of this publication.
After lunch, we continued a leisurely autumn walk along Shevchenko Street. We stopped by the walls of our KSU office to tell its history to new friends from KNU and take a group photo for the memory. Then, through Shevchenko Park, we walked to the city lake, where the perfect final location awaited us — Prostir.coffee. This is an establishment relocated from Kherson by our fellow countryman, which became the best symbolic punctuation in the conversation about preserving one's space even far from home.
These were two days about support, memory, and creating new connections.
Thank you to everyone who walked this route with us! Look for yourselves in the photos!
The initiative is implemented within the framework of the project «Together: supporting displaced communities of Kherson youth», implemented by the Public Organization "Youth Space 'MoLoDzhka'" with the grant support of the Ukrainian-Danish Youth House.