A new cultural centre, DRUK, has opened in Kharkiv. It is located on one of the city’s oldest streets and, like the building itself, is a locally listed architectural heritage site.
The aim of the centre’s founders is to restore the building and turn it into the main cultural hub of one of Kharkiv’s oldest neighbourhoods, while also contributing to the development of the street itself.
Olha Sytnyk, head of the cultural centre, spoke about how DRUK and the surrounding street are being developed.
According to Olha, the purpose of creating the new space is to ensure the sustainable development of culture and to support civil society. It is also about building a community that supports and engages in initiatives, defends its rights, and works collectively toward cultural development.
“There is no place in Kharkiv where different cultural initiatives can come together, form a larger community, and work jointly on projects,” Olha says. In her view, one of the city’s key challenges is that many cultural initiatives reach only the local level and do not scale nationally or internationally.
“We would like cultural initiatives to come to us so that we can jointly create projects that can be scaled.”
The concept of the cultural centre — including its programming, principles of cooperation between cultural organisations, social responsibility of businesses, and target audience — had been formed by Olha long before the project began. In terms of administrative processes, the team worked with Alter Development, the development company responsible for restoring the building.
