You're reading: Industrial zones slowly turn into creativity hubs

It’s long been the practice in the West to revitalize decaying old industrial zones in cities with new housing developments and arts and cultural centers. The process in Kyiv has only just started. But a few abandoned and neglected industrial areas already got makeovers into trendy art centers and clubs.

Platforma Art Factory
1 Bilomorska St.
Almost
a year ago the former Darnytskiy silk plant laid abandoned and idle.
Built in the 1940s, the plant had been a major producer of silk goods,
but that ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the economic
turmoil that followed in the 1990s.
Now, after a partial makeover,
the plant is back in business, though of a different type: about 10
percent of the plant’s territory now regularly plays host to up to
30,000 people who come here for food festivals.
The new owners of
the plant plan to expand into the rest of the 65,000 square meter space
over time, setting up offices for rent, exhibition rooms, workshops and
stores, and creating a full-function recreation center for the entire
southern left-bank district.
“We’re trying to see if it works or
not, and see if there can be a symbiosis between the site and the
festival. It has huge potential,” Roman Tugashev, the organizer of the
food festivals at the former plant, told the Kyiv Post.

 

G13
23 Baltiiskiy Lane
After
the glass production sector crashed, the owners of the Kyiv Glass
Factory started to look for other ways to keep the enterprise in
business. Part of the plant has now been renovated into G13 – a number
of pavilions, including film and photo studios, makeup rooms, a stage
and a summer terrace. The rooms can be booked to hold private events,
like presentations or parties.
“Our concept is to create something
really transformatory,” Dmytro Poznyakov, who leads the plant
transformation, told the Kyiv Post.
The G13 organizers have retained
the industrial style of the buildings they use. Since opening 18 months
ago, G13 has attracted a range of small manufacturers working with
anything from artificial stone, to valuable plants and trees, to custom
bicycle makers. It holds regular events, concerts and exhibitions.

Izolyatsia Cultural Initiatives Center
12 Naberezhno-Lugova St.
Izolyatsia,
the well-known art-center from Donetsk, was forced to move to Kyiv as
the factory where it was located was taken over and looted by
Russian-separatist fighters.
“We lost almost everything,” says Olesya Bolot, the communications manager for the center.
The separatists have since turned the factory site into a training area, prison, and a storage site for stolen cars, according to the center’s website. They have also destroyed much of the artwork that the center wasn’t able to evacuate to Kyiv, including an installation by Pascale Marthine Tayou – a giant lipstick tube on top of a factory smokestack, dedicated to the women of Donbas. The militants blew it up.
Izolyatsia’s new home is the former laboratory of Kyiv Shipbuilding and Ship Repair plant, where the center opened last summer. The plant, which had been the main enterprise serving most of the ships sailing the Dnipro River for more than 100 years, fell on hard times, and is now working at a fraction of its capacity.
Izolyatsia this summer launched lithography and woodworking workshops, along with photo and digital laboratories and a co-working space. It is now a pilot project with the goal of developing the creative arts economy and community. The organizers believe that following the stagnation of heavy industry, the creative economy could be one of the new sectors to slowly replace it.
Meanwhile, Izolyatsia is kept going by grants, philanthropy and a subscriber system. The resident artists are still busy, holding exhibitions and continuing to promote the creative arts domestically and abroad – their project “#onvacation” was a big hit at the Venice Biennale.

A view of the historic Pechersk district of Kyiv as seen from the third floor of Arsenal, where renovation is still in progress. (Maksym Asafatov)

Mystetskyi Arsenal
10-12 Lavrska St.
The Kyiv Arsenal is a classical-style building that from the early 19th century functioned as a weapons storage site and a gun workshop. Now it hosts workshops of a different kind – on art.
More than 50 major art exhibitions have been held here over the past five years. Over the last five years 2.7 million people have visited Arsenal, while the potential annual number of visitors is reckoned to be around 9 million.
The six-floor building was to have been completely converted this year, but the process slowed due to the need to research archaeological finds at the site. Now only one of the six floors is open, and only 3 percent to 5 percent of the building’s total 63,000 square meters area is in use.
The center is the only one of its kind in which the government has played a big part of the revitalization and conversion process – former Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko was one of the big names behind the project, which he wanted to turn into “the Ukrainian Louvre.”

Port Creative Hub

An art exhibition is under preparation in Port Creative Hub, a storage area turned into an art space, on Aug. 27. (Maksym Asafatov)

10A Naberezhno-Khreshchatytska St.
The cultural event organizer Art-Management has been renting a former storage area, built in the 1960s and mainly used for warehousing food products for the Dnipro ship industry at the river port, and using it for exhibitions, lectures, and presentations.
“There are a lot of empty rooms that are not used and that have been almost lost to Kyiv’s citizens,” said Vladimir Kadygrob, the co-owner of Art-Management.
Kadygrob believes that the industrial zones are unvalued assets for city development, mainly because of bureaucracy and a lack of understanding of how such areas could be put to other use.

Closer Art Center
31 Nyzhnoiurkivska St.
Since 2013, Closer has been renting a part of Kyiv Linen Factory, as most of the plant’s production facilities had been relocated outside the city. Starting out with hosting parties and lectures, the center then opened a gallery, a recording studio, and clothes shops. Apart from Closer, the former factory also hosts jewelry, woodworking, and shoemaking businesses.
“We tried to create atmosphere like in Kreuzberg (an artsy part of Berlin),” says Veronika Velichko, the manager of Closer. “We saw there was a tradition of using industrial buildings (for art centers) in Berlin long before everyone started to talk about the process of ‘Berlinization’ in Kyiv.”
Up to 70% of the former factory’s space is used at the regular Strichka electronic music festival, and monthly jazz concerts are also being held.
While the map of Kyiv is dotted with underused and abandoned industrial sites, the city administration has not adopted a holistic approach to their redevelopment and revitalization.
One of the main reasons is that the chaotic privatization of previous years has left much of the capital’s post-industrial zones under private ownership, according to Hanna Bondar, the acting director of Kyiv City Council’s Department of Urban Development.
Still, the process is already under way, and as each creative center pops up, it provides impetus for the creation of others.

Kyiv Post writer Maksym Asafatov can be reached at [email protected]