Lviv National Academy of Arts

I gave a brief address in an event on Campus last week as part of a solidarity with Ukrainian colleagues - here's what I said:
We’ve been working with LNAA, the Lviv National Academy of Arts and PPV Networks (also in Lviv) for 4 years on a British Council Creative Spark project. The project has been about embedding entrepreneurial skills in the curriculum and latterly about developing their strategic plan. The Ukrainian people are naturally entrepreneurial and we are seeing the strength of their innovation and resilience right now. 
The project has included their staff visiting Cardiff Met on two or three occasions, and their new Rector, Vasyl Kosiv attending the Enterprise Educators UK conference in Oxford with us, and staff and student trips from CSAD to Lviv.
Our staff tell of the welcome they got in Ukraine – we are treated like family.
They have been in continuous contact with us on what’s app and email keeping us informed of how they’re doing and reassuring us that they’re all right!! 
To give you a flavour of the realities of life in Lviv for people just like you and I, this is what Ulyana Shchurko, Head of the Arts Management programme and our main contact at LNAA, and also star of a video by an American news crew as ‘The Angel of LVIV’ organising the refugee management 12 hours a day at Lviv railway station, which is the gateway to Poland. has been messaging us about:-

 

In date order.
 
Thank you, dear!  Sorry for not responding for so long... LNAA is on "vacations" for two weeks, so, we're not at work.
A lot of students left home, some leaved the country, those who stay in Lviv and in the dorm, are engaged in volunteering. 
… 
We also host the colleagues and students  from other Ukrainian cities that were bombed.  Today we're expecting the evacuation train with the refugees from Kharkiv arts academy...
Vasyl and Petro (our other key project member, Head of Graphics) have got tonnes of work!
….
I haven't checked my email the whole week - sorry.  Was engaged with hosting refugees at home, volunteering for foreign media and working with refugee streams at  the railway station.
There more and more evacuation trains coming to Lviv, and more and more  - leaving for Poland.
 …
Only home several hours a day at home, usually - during the night 
Husband is on patrol with the police on the streets, kids - volunteering for different needs and places.  The way a typical family now lives in Lviv.
… 
We were called back to teaching this week.  Students need at least some normality in their life…. Between volunteering, hiding in the bomb shelters, listening to the air raid alerts…


We have today been sent a video from Vasyl Kosiv their VC, showing how they’re coping with the influx of students and colleagues and their families from Kyiv and Kharkiv, it’ll be on our weblink after this event
 
There’s also right now an exhibition and print sale of Anti-War posters in the Umbrella gallery in the Capitol Centre, Queen Street, Cardiff, organized by Malgorzata Michniewicz of our illustration course who is from Poland, raising money for those displaced
 
I hope you agree that we’re proud to think of our friends in Ukraine as part of Cardiff Met’s family.

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