Regional Media Workshops

Media Workshops 2020: From Crisis to Solution

In 2020, Ukraine was shaken not only by the war that had already been going on for six years, but also by the Corona pandemic. Existing disputes and internal conflicts have thus intensified and demanded a lot from the Ukrainian population.

In five media workshops, 65 young Ukrainians interested in the media looked for ways to find common solutions in a country torn apart politically and socially. The focus was deliberately directed away from the capital Kiev and into the Ukrainian regions. Civil society in the regions must be strengthened to talk constructively about crises and conflicts and to allow and understand diverse opinions. This is the prerequisite for finding solutions together - locally, but also across regions.

Supported by a German-Ukrainian team of trainers and five local media partners, the participants acquired practical journalistic skills in August 2020 in Uzhgorod, Dnipro, Sumy, Poltava and Lviv and published their research, photo and writing projects in a project blog. Selected articles by the young journalists were published in the five regional media Gazeta.ua (Kyiv/Poltava), Litsa (Dnipro), Media Kolo (Sumy), Zaholovok (Uzhgorod) and Zaxid.net (Lviv). In addition, a series of collaborative publications was produced by the media partners, in which the five editorial teams worked together on topics and examined them from different regional perspectives.

The face-to-face meetings in August and the first online media workshop in October enabled participants, trainers and project partners to network and learn from each other despite Corona.

The project was funded by the German Federal Foreign Office and is part of the Civil Society Cooperation program, which promotes cooperation between civil societies in Germany, the eastern partner countries and Russia.

Medienwerkstätten 2019 – Ukrainischer Mauerfall

Das Jubiläum 30 Jahre nach dem Fall der Berliner Mauer nahmen wir zum Anlass, junge Ukrainer*innen nach ihren „Mauern“ zu befragen. In vier Medienwerkstätten haben 45 NGO-Mitarbeiter*innen, Aktivist*innen und Studierende nach Barrieren, die sich durch ihre Orte, ihre Regionen oder gar durchs ganze Land ziehen, gesucht. Unterstützt von einem deutsch-ukrainischen Trainerteam und fünf lokalen Medienpartnern haben sie von Juni bis September 2019 in Uschgorod, Mykolajiw, Dnipro und Lwiw praktische journalistische Kompetenzen erworben und ihre Recherche-, Foto- und Schreibprojekte in einem Projektblog veröffentlicht.

Ausgewählte Beiträge der Nachwuchsjournalist*innen wurden in den vier Regionalmedien Zaxid.net (Lwiw), Uzhgorod Press Club, Litsa (Dnipro) und Nikolaevskie Novosti sowie der überregionalen Gazeta.ua (Kiew) veröffentlicht.

Im November – anlässlich des Jahrestages des Mauerfalls – fanden von Ost nach West öffentliche Diskussionsrunden statt: In Mykolajew fragten die Redakteur*innen von Nikolaevskie Novosti ihre Leser*innen nach den Mauern zwischen Zentrum und Regionen, in Dnipro lag der Fokus auf der historischen und metaphorischen Bedeutung des Berliner Mauerfalls für die ukrainische Gesellschaft. In Kiew diskutierte Gazeta.ua mit ihren Leser*innen den Zustand der Berichterstattung ukrainischer Lokalmedien. In Lviv zeigten Studierende und Dozent*innen der Journalistik-Fakultät der Ivano-Franko-Universität ihre Perspektiven im ukrainischen Journalismus auf, in Uzhgorod analysierten deutsche und ukrainische Historiker*innen mit Journalist*innen im Presseclub den Status Quo ihrer Zivilgesellschaften.

Die Medienwerkstätten 2019 wurden durch das Auswärtige Amt gefördert.

Media workshops 2015/16 - Giving a voice to internally displaced persons

42 young Ukrainian internally displaced persons from the Donbass and Crimea, activists and aspiring journalists acquired basic journalistic knowledge and media skills at five media workshops in Kharkiv, Odesa, Lviv, Chernivtsi and Kyiv from August to November 2016. The media workshops on the topic of internally displaced persons were held for the first time in 2015.

The research, writing and photo projects of the project participants resulted in a newspaper in Ukrainian and Russian - a personal response of the participants and their interlocutors to the question of what "home" means to them.

In addition to the media workshops for aspiring journalists, n-ost organized the training series A Voice for Refugees in 2015 in cooperation with the Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations (ifa). In Kyiv and Berlin, 20 refugee organizations from Ukraine, Russia and Georgia gained knowledge in the areas of press and public relations work and networked with media and journalists from Ukraine and Germany.

Training series "A Voice for Refugees" 2015 from ostpol on Vimeo:

Background: Giving a voice to internally displaced persons

The influx of at least 1.4 million internally displaced persons from the Donbass and Crimea poses enormous challenges for Ukraine. Integrating the internally displaced and defusing the conflicts and prejudices between the locals and the newcomers are tasks that are of utmost importance for Ukraine's future. In this context, media portrayal and a reflective approach by citizens to their own media play a central role. Equally important is the ability of refugee organizations and the IDPs themselves to mobilize the public and communicate their situation and flight story.

The 2015 and 2016 projects were carried out in cooperation with ifa (Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations), supported by funding from the German Federal Foreign Office.