this spread i want to save for a wonderful small project, which has been started in early 2016 and now lives its own life. it is called *franek, wake up and run it!* in translation. it was made by a tight group of 3 lazy-no-more urban activists, who were patching down several ukrainian cities into the one pocket issue - road book of urban comixes. these yellow pages tell you about sly citizens, their weird traditions, blind politicians, different tastes on different scales. all was caught up by the nib of my liner, but produced as an art object after effective collaboration with alex and dasha, and also a lot of people, who believed us.
almost a year passed between first and second pictures above. from early short stories drawn fast with black ink pen in kyiv city and presentation with press conference in ivano-frankivsk where we showed not only finish product but a way of creating it. with our idea we won urban grant proposed by wnisef foundation and canaction school for urban studies and realise the whole company.
we printed 500 pocket books with shost stories from ivano-frankivsk city (called franek by locals). i ran several workshops on the topic how to get out the narratives from ourselves. people sent us true stories, which held place in ivano-frankivsk, kiev, kharkiv. i noted them to new yellow post-its, so the pile was growing up. in spring we showed the project at the architectural conference *canactions 2016: resilient cities* (kyiv) and got really good feedback. because the product was really new.
additionally for a merch we printed real stickers and posters, which explained the whole story and some future perspectives of the projects.
stories told about political engagement into the new airline company opening
or the revival of old literature movement in the city
or speculations around well-known festival - will this be an old story under the new brand or not
but what happened after we can't even predict. step by step we were pushing efforts with stories and in summer we found ourselves in a group of activists who wanted to renovate a public location in their city and asked for our help. we voted and then placed our money from distribution of our book to this urban project. we were installed in the process of bottom-up changes and taking part in a summer camp, where a team of architects and urban planners designed the format of chosen location, using the mobile office at this site.
so the new and more fundamental urban story says about activism, our small book, first easy steps of changing, summer camp, big activisation (awakening) and a serie of workshops after, donation and supporting by the local authorities, business, parties and society.
as i saw by myself, everything is linked in life, and even a small book made for fun at first can raise some good ideas at the soil, if accents were put correctly. we continue to gather urban stories and i still draw comixes on a yellow stickers
