During 2018-2019 U-LEAD with Europe Programme was organising several photocontests aiming to promote the decentralisation reform and communicating it to the people living allover Ukraine (especially in small settlements).
The first photocontest, “Big photos of small places. My hromada – our future”, took place during April – May 2018, and the second, “Strong women of my hromada”, was held during May – June 2019.
In general one of tasks that the communication team had to solve was to ensure proper communication of the reform amongst the “common citizens” of the capital. According to Ukrainian legislation, the city of Kyiv is a standalone administrative unit that is why the processes of the reform didn’t affect the citizens residing there at all.
To highlight the reform we cooperated with the Kyiv Metro who allowed to organise several events in the upper hall of one of the most busiest stations in the city – “Zoloti Vorota”. One of the benefit for selecting this outstanding and novel location was its transit workload and capacity. The following features were also considered prior to selecting the station as a exhibition place:
- it is located in the historical centre of the city;
- it attracts tourists from and outside Ukraine;
- it has a lot of potentially useable space above the ground;
- it was possible to organise a full-scale involving government officials;
- it is possible to receive tons of media mentions and cover thousands of target audience providing maximum reach for the lowest possible cost.
Each of the exhibitions have played their role eminently providing a lot of media coverage as well as user-generated content (posts, stories and photos published in social media).
The first metroexhibition was opened immediately after the photos have been showed in the roadshows in all oblasts of Ukraine and its opening was dedicated to the Local Self-Governance Day (7th December 2018). As a bonus, in the evening of the St. Nicholas day (a widely celebrated holiday in Ukraine), a photo zone was installed. It allowed each passer-by to make an instant free photo with one of the exhibited photo on the background.
The second collaboration with the metro lasted in September-October 2019. The topic of the exhibition and respective photocontest was fighting existing stereotypes in relation to women and their capabilities in Ukrainian society. The aim was also to highligh the significant presence of women in life of each community, town and city.
Additional links:
- Press announcement of the first exhibition on the Kyiv Metro website;
- Photos taken during St. Nicholas evening;
- Media report about opening of the second exhibition.
The exhibitions were organised in the framework of U-LEAD with Europe: Ukraine – Local Empowerment, Accountability and Development Programme, a multi-donor action of the European Union and its member states Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Poland and Sweden. The Programme cooperates with MinRegion in establishment of a multilevel governance system that is transparent, accountable and responsive to the needs of citizens.
