OPEN CALL: “THE LAND WE CARRY”
Only three days left to apply for participation in the community art project “THE LAND WE CARRY”! Deadline for applications: 28/06/2025
The community art program The Land We Carry explores cultural practices of gardening and cooking as sources of support and resilience for communities during times of daily loss and tragedy. Within the project, we will work with artistic media such as drawing, ceramics, performative practices, and storytelling.
Together with three artists — Diana Khalilova, Iryna Loskot, and Lilia Petrova — we will re-discover the warmth and meaning these practices can bring. What makes gardening or cooking feel so comforting and grounding? Can they momentarily transport us to a place of safety, a sense of home?
This project creates space for your personal stories — about childhood gardens, favourite plants, or ones that remind you of familiar steppe or forest landscapes. What plant care practices were passed down in your family, and which ones have you developed on your own, as a way to find peace, strength, or creative expression?
Cooking and gathering around the table with loved ones help us get through difficult times. It’s not always about celebration — it’s about being together, representing our cultures and traditions, and repeating rituals that make us feel resilient.
Do you have a favorite family recipe? What do you remember about cooking together at home?
This project is for everyone who wants to share their story, listen to others, and learn more about the cultural and natural diversity within our country.
During the sessions with the artists, we’ll draw, work with clay, move, and talk about plants and gardens. We will create collaborative artworks, cook together, share recipes, and learn how to tell our stories through artistic practices.
Apply to the community art project “The Land We Carry” by June 28, 11:59 PM – here.
PROGRAM SCHEDULE
Duration: July 2 – August 9 (10), 2025
Location: Jam Factory Art Center, 124 Bohdana Khmelnytskoho St, Lviv (AIR Space)
Sessions:
Wednesdays — 17:00–20:30
Saturdays — 12:00–16:00
Total: 10 sessions planned
WHO CAN PARTICIPATE?
You’re welcome to apply if you’re over 18 and currently living in Lviv.
No previous experience or special knowledge is required, but an interest in gardening, cooking, and openness to group interaction are important.
The program is built around a sequence of interconnected sessions, where each builds on the previous one. That’s why we encourage participants to attend as many sessions as possible.
By submitting your application, you confirm your intention to participate according to the schedule.
Please note: spots are limited.
BACKGROUND
This year’s Magic Carpets project at Jam Factory Art Center focuses on two key social-cultural practices — gardening and cooking — at the intersection with artistic expression.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has resulted in vast areas of lost, abandoned, and mined land across occupied, de-occupied, and frontline territories. Since 2014, thousands of people displaced from their homes have found ways to cope with loss by “re-creating” their sense of home in new places — through gardening, which helps rebuild familiar environments, and through cooking and sharing food, as performative acts that awaken memory through taste and smell.
Family recipes, seasonal holidays, and local dishes become ways of preserving and sharing cultural heritage and memory from Ukraine’s regions and national communities.
The invited artists will work with participants’ stories using various artistic media — in a space of trust and safety.
WHAT IS A “COMMUNITY ART PROGRAM?”
It’s a creative interaction — through artistic or mixed media practices — between artists and participants, whether previously acquainted or not. Through this process, all participants become co-authors of a shared experience: of being together, playing, moving, creating sound or form, and making a collective artwork — with room for personal expression.
WHEN WILL I FIND OUT IF I’VE BEEN SELECTED?
The application deadline is June 28, 2025, at 11:59 PM.
You will receive an email with the results on June 30, 2025, sent to the email address you provided in the application form.
Be sure to check your Spam folder as well.
Further information here.