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 Kyiv 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 Partnership countries and Russia.

Media workshops 2019 – Fall of the Ukrainian Wall

We took the anniversary 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall as an opportunity to ask young Ukrainians about their “walls”. In four media workshops, 45 NGO employees, activists and students looked for barriers that run through their towns, regions or even the entire country. Supported by a German-Ukrainian team of trainers and five local media partners, they acquired practical journalistic skills in Uschgorod, Mykolaiv, Dnipro and Lviv from June to September 2019 and published their research, photography and writing projects in a blog.

Selected articles by the young journalists were published in the four regional media Zaxid.net (Lviv), Uzhgorod Press Club, Litsa (Dnipro) and Nikolaevskie Novosti as well as the national Gazeta.ua (Kyiv).

In November - on the occasion of the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall - public discussions took place from east to west: in Mykolayiv, the editors of Nikolaevskie Novosti asked their readers about the walls between the center and the regions, in Dnipro the focus was on the historical and metaphorical significance of the fall of the Berlin Wall for Ukrainian society. In Kyiv, Gazeta.ua discussed with its readers the state of reporting in Ukrainian local media. In Lviv, students and lecturers from the Faculty of Journalism at Ivan Franko University presented their perspectives in Ukrainian journalism. In Uzhgorod, German and Ukrainian historians and journalists from the Press Club analyzed the status quo of their civil societies.

The 2019 media workshops were funded by the Federal Foreign Office.

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.