Look around you. I hope you are somewhere warm-ish, with light and power, maybe a cup of tea. I suspect you have your phone nearby, or you are reading this on your phone. In a little while I will finish writing this and go start to cook dinner.
Now take yourself to another place where it is quite likely the power will go off at a moment’s notice and stay off for many hours. The heating in your apartment building will not work. If you are in a flat, high up in an apartment block, then the water may not be pumped up to you.
It is just coming into late autumn for us here in the UK and a cold night might be -1 to -4 degrees C at the moment. Time to bring in some potted plants from the garden, and turn up the heating. But once again if you were in a powerless, unheated apartment, and you knew that the temperatures will drop to -20 soon, how hopeful will you feel about staying warm this winter ?
Now allow me to add one more layer to your imagining. You are safe in your city most of the time, and can get to work or even get to the theatre, but with increasing frequency alarms ring out across the city of a missile attack which may, at any moment, split your community apart.
Imagine finally that you have got used to the warning alarms, and even worked out which explosions or missile noises signal a ‘hit’ against an invading missile, or something which is unstopped and heading into your city area, but someone from what appeared to be a friendly Country proves they can, and have, paralysed the early warning system.
It is at this point, sitting in the warmth with light and maybe a cuppa, that you may – like me feel paralysed, guilty, powerless, sad and probably angry.
We can’t stop the invasion of Ukraine, but we can help.
When I was at the Jam Factory in Lviv, to the West of Ukraine, the ExEc Director talked of an idea they had to offer refuge/retreat to some artists. The idea was that they would reach out to artists in the East of Ukraine who are facing all I have written about the winter. They would invite the artist to come over to Lviv for a month, find them a warm place to stay, and offer them space within the amazing arts centre to work, think, write.
I came away wondering whether we could help raise some money to make this a reality. I’ve just had a check in with the Exec and she reckons each monthly retreat space would need around 40-50k (£800 say) to cover accom, food, and travel support.
There are so many calls on people’s charitable £$ at this time, but I am going to spend a little while reaching out to a few theatre/arts networks to see whether we might be able to raise enough for 3-4 retreats to be offered. If you could help that would be wonderful. My email is chris@chrisgrady.org and I could set up a crowdfunder or liaise with your network to get something happening.
Your practical help would be most gratefully appreciated
Stay warm, and stay hopeful, Slava Ukraini. I will aim to go back to Kyiv and Lviv and maybe other cities in Feb/March, but maybe before then we could help a few artists.
PS / Within 5 minutes of this post going live, one theatremaker pledged to help. That made me create the following crowdfunder campaign https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/a-warmer-ukraine-winter-for-artists Please share and help if you can