Kyiv’s visitors will now be able to explore Ukrainian history right upon arrival, before even leaving the railway station.
A new multimedia exhibition called “Ukraine Wow” will open in an unused department of Kyiv’s central railway station, introducing Ukraine’s geography, industry, history and culture to the capital’s visitors.
The project was initiated by Ukraine’s state-owned railroad monopoly Ukrzaliznytsia and brought to life by Kyiv’s Gres Todorchuk PR agency.
“The railway road unites the whole country — it’s the circulatory system of Ukraine,” Yaroslava Gres, the co-founder of Gres Todorchuk PR told the Kyiv Post. “Through the railway, we show how fantastic our country is.”
“Ukraine Wow” will run from Nov. 14 until Dec. 29, providing a guidebook in English for foreigners. The entrance fee will cost Hr 50 (about $2), and all the money raised from sales will be transferred to Ukrzaliznytsa’s social projects.
The project comes amid Ukraine’s efforts to make the country’s image more attractive to both local and foreign tourists. The exhibition’s visuals were created under Ukraine’s national brand design called “Ukraine Now.” Made by advertising agency Banda, the design won a prestigious international Red Dot Award in 2018.
“There’s just one step, one line in the letter from Ukraine Now to Ukraine Wow,” Gres said.
Former depot
The collaboration between Ukrzaliznytsia and Gres Todorchuk PR started last year when the state company wanted to celebrate their professional holiday, Railway Employee Day, in a new way. Instead of the old-school music shows they’d held for years, Ukrzaliznytsia wanted to organize something more memorable.
So they reached out to the award-winning agency that promotes cultural, educational and social initiatives. Gres Todorchuk PR was behind a number of creative projects causing a buzz in the country including Corruption Park and the Global Teacher Prize.
In 2018, the two put together an exhibition at a local gallery dedicated to the history of the railway industry. Although it lasted several days, the project attracted a lot of attention.
“It became clear that the exhibition format, on the one hand, entertaining, on the other hand, educational, works great,” Gres said.
So this year, Ukrzaliznytsia decided to repeat last year’s practice and hold another exhibition connected to their field. However this time, they also wanted to make it attractive for a broad audience.
Gres says that the most time-consuming stage of preparing the project was the search for a venue. They’d been looking for a spot linked to railways for months until the most obvious, and at the same time unobvious, decision came to their minds — to use the central railway station in Kyiv.
Ukraine’s busiest railway station serves over 20 million passengers yearly — it is often crowded and it’s hard to imagine holding an event there. However, it turned out that the busy halls of the railway station hide a huge, unexploited department that was perfect for the exhibition.
The 3,000-square-meter department used to be a train depot where locomotives were housed and repaired. However, it hasn’t been used for almost 20 years now.
“This is a huge depot where trains used to arrive, and it looks fantastic,” Gres said.
Yaroslava Gres, the co-founder of the Gres Todorchuk Pr Agency visits the former depot inside the Kyiv central railway station, where the agency arranges an exhibition “Ukraine Wow” in October 2019. (Courtesy)
The department is located right next to the platform where the train that connects Kyiv with Ukraine’s biggest airport, Boryspil, arrives and departs. So foreign visitors will be able to jump into discovering Ukraine straight after coming here or leave it for dessert right before departure.
Gres says that Ukraine is a very rich country and its guests will get to learn a lot at the exhibition.
“Foreigners will be very surprised by how many wow things and wow people and wow places there are in Ukraine,” she said.
Rare exhibits
Gres Todorchuk PR along with the exhibition’s curators wanted “Ukraine Wow” to show how diverse the country is. For that reason, rather than focusing on one matter, the project spotlights four broad fields — geography, industry, history and culture.
The exhibition is built as a symbolic train ride, with Ukraine as a passenger that a visitor gets to know through their journey.
The first zone, for instance, is an allusion to strangers’ first encounter in a train — they meet and draw conclusions based on appearances, although they don’t know anything about each other. There, the exhibition shows Ukraine’s picturesque landscapes, gives a taste of its nature through scents like wildflowers and sounds like sea waves.
The second zone is the so-called intimate talk, when fellow travellers break the ice and start sharing.
“Like when you bare your heart to a companion and tell them even more than to your own mom,” Gres said.
Here, the exhibition offers surprising facts about the country — some of them presented as text and some as installations. For instance, the history of Kyiv’s Rodina Mat (Motherland) Monument, which is one of the tallest statues in the world, is accompanied by a VR headset. The set offers visitors a view from the top of the 102-meter monument.
Apart from that, “Ukraine Wow” will feature a variety of rare artifacts such as a self-portrait by world-known avant-garde Ukrainian artist Kazimir Malevich, cubism works by Ukrainian-born sculptor Alexander Archipenko, silver hryvnias that date back to Kyivan Rus and much more.
Gres says there was only one criterion for picking artifacts and stories to tell through the exhibition — whether they would be able to wow visitors.
Although the exhibition is expected to attract many foreign guests, its team also hopes that their project will help locals rediscover their home country and fall in love with it again. Gres says that Ukrainians are very demanding of their country, but they should start with themselves.
“This is an appeal to love your country, treat it with respect and do everything to make it better than it was yesterday,” she said.
“Ukraine Wow.” Kyiv central railway station. 1 Vokzalna Sq. Nov. 14 — Dec. 29. Tue-Sun. 11 a. m. — 8 p. m. Hr 50
