a cultural project based on Brighton's Ukrainian midsummer festival
Kupala, Ukraine's traditional midsummer festival, was
first celebrated in Brighton, on the south coast of
England, in July 2022. It was the first large
gathering of the new Ukrainian community that was
beginning to form in the city and surrounding region,
following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February
of that year, and it helped to bring that community
together. At this Kupala on the south coast of England,
Ukrainians practice their traditions and share them, with
their children and also with the friends they have now
made in the larger community of which they are now part.
The Kupala Brighton project, inspired by the festival,
presents Ukrainian traditions and celebrates the
community's creativity. It aims to explore how traditions
work for communities today, how they are reinvented, and
how they are combined with modern culture.
We talk about our project in this video:
in an interview for Lossi 36, which covers society,
politics and culture from Central Europe to Central Asia,
'Kupala
is coming home to Europe',
and in an article
first published by Gramarye,
the journal of the Chichester Centre for Fairy Tales,
Fantasy and Speculative Fiction.