Festival "Arsenal of Ideas. All Together" ended in the Mystetskyi Arsenal
We will remember the tenth "Arsenal of Ideas. All Together" with an atmosphere of sincere delight, children's laughter, immediacy and teenage passion.
On September 19-21, 2025, the Art Arsenal gathered children, parents, teachers and teenagers. Festival "Arsenal of Ideas. All Together" — is an annual inclusive project about learning about various experiences and people through interaction, search, play and free choice.
Organizer of Festival Mystetskyi Arsenal in cooperation with GO «Community of Art Arsenal». Project were implemented with the support of the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation within the framework of the grant program «Sustainability of society through culture» and with the assistance of the Embassy of Canada in Ukraine.
First day is inscribed in the history of the Art Arsenal as the day when the festival was celebrated with the European Heritage Awards /Europa Nostra Awards 2025 in the category «Citizen Engagement and Awarenessraising» —, a bronze award plaque of the festival was unveiled.
The event was attended by: General Director of the Art Arsenal Olesya Ostrovska-Lyuta, Vice President of Europa Nostra Nataliya Musienko first Deputy Minister of Culture and Strategic Communications of Ukraine Halyna Hryhorenko and Head of the Bureau of the EU program «Creative Europe» in Ukraine Mykola Ulyanov.
«Europa Nostra — is an important and serious European competition that has been going on for several decades. This competition brings together and presents the best achievements from the cultural heritage of the whole of Europe. Cultural heritage is a tool, a segment of cultural diplomacy and it is through cultural heritage that we step into Europe and present ourselves as part of Europe. Europe sees how big Ukraine is, how European Ukraine is, how colorful our country is, Natalya Musienko noted in her welcoming speech.
Before the opening of the festival, on September 18, a closed Professional program for participants took place.
The festival space has traditionally been divided into educational and gaming locations. However, this year, in addition to the Stands, Workshops, Stage, Fair and Lecture Hall, it was possible to join activities in the Reading Room and Space of Opportunity.
The events of the Literary Program took place in the Reading Room, which was presented for the first time at the festival in 2025: you could visit writing workshops, meet authors, get to read and open a microphone.
In the Space of Opportunities for Teens, on Saturday and Sunday (September 20 and 21), various organizations offered relevant opportunities in education, volunteering, leisure, traveling in Ukraine and the world — is a great location for meeting or relaxing with your peers.
For the first time, the festival presented the Program for teenagers from teenagers, which was curated by the participants of the Teenage Council of the Art Arsenal.
«All summer we worked on our program: invented topics of events, invited speakers, prepared an exhibition of things lost in the Arsenal...», — shared Vladyslava Kolomiets, member of the Teenage Council 2024-2025.
The festival program this year — is more than 60 events. At lectures, performances, performances, workshops, film screenings, our young visitors pumped up English, participated in art workshops, casually communicated and learned about something new for themselves and about themselves.
In addition to the program of events, the festival «Arsenal of ideas. Different together» — is always the work of various stands, where participants were invited to join their educational game programs for nine hours every day. The guests received numerous cognitive experiences at more than 40 stands, of which 22 were presented by museum participants, 4 by fair participants, the remaining — are public organizations, circles, libraries, schools, educational projects.
At the fair of games and educational products, children and parents found things for themselves for interesting leisure and education, and the smallest visitors brawled and explored the space in a special safe area for playing from 0 to 4 years.
"Arsenal of Ideas. All Together" — first of all, is about inclusion: an important task for the Art Arsenal as an organizer was to provide a safe, barrier-free educational space where everyone and everyone would feel comfortable. That is why, on the eve of the start of the festival, we invited the Superhumans Center team and their super — Kateryna and Mykola Gradnovykh-Savytskyi to visit, so that they would test the availability.
«We tried to create a space where you can not only learn something and have fun with your peers, but also learn about all the diversity of human experience, and thanks to this — become more open and empathetic for both children and adults. We are convinced — in the relaxed atmosphere of the festival, there is much more potential in communication and play than in the rules and guidelines. This is a safe space for the free expression of any emotions, for questions and thoughts, a space where there is no «wrong» way of knowing and interacting», — head of the educational department, curator of the festival, Hanna Klymenko.
Art projects could also be visited in the festival space. Here our guests reflected and participated in joint creativity: «Ya — Chimera» (exposition of the Ar/Br art workshop by Good Bread. Curator: Anastasia Kuzmenko), «Di(ya)ty» (Tanya Mytalnikova, participatory project), «A4 (invisible work)», (Dasha Podoltseva), «Archive of the future. (Non)museum adoption» (curator: Dasha Podoltseva), «Touches of the future» (interactive installation), «Closer than it seems», exhibition projects from the PIC Conference, as well as book collections (BRAW — 2025 bookshelf with a selection of books from all over Europe from the Bologna Book Fair, as well as the traveling book exhibition Beyond Paper Plane from the Czech Center in Kyiv).
Within the framework of the festival, this year the Mobility Program — was again active, a professional development program for employees of organizations that, within the framework of their activities, develop educational programs for children and adolescents (museums, libraries, public organizations in the field of culture, youth centers, etc.). The selected participants received financial support for arrival (tickets and accommodation during the festival) to introduce their activities at the stand or in the event program.
This year 70 volunteers joined to work "Arsenal of Ideas. All Together" amd helped the festival`s team and visitors.
Thank you very much to all the participants, visitors and visitors who joined this year's festival — joint holiday together.
Curator group:
Anna Klymenko
Liana Komardenko
Polina Bukharina
Anna Alekseeva
Partners:
Cambridge.ua
Clinic MEDICOM
An extravaganza of travels
ERGO
Media partners:
Children in the city
#ShoTam
1+1 media
1+1 media school
Education
Public Broadcasting
Radio Culture
Lirum
TyKyiv
