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Color Up Peace: Supporting Ukraine and Ukrainians since 2016

Text: Lisa Glybchenko

Color Up Peace works at the intersection of art-making and technology to leverage artistic innovation as a peacebuilding tool. I invite people from all over the world to submit photos of what peace is to them – and then turn the photos into coloring pages by drawing every outline manually. The idea is that then someone would be able to color the outline and connect to another’s experience of peace in visual and digital ways. Like this, the outlines become instruments of deliberative and participatory futures design – where people build demos of peace arrangements by exploring and multiplying peace values through the ways they engage with the outlines.

vesiväreillä maalattu paperi, jossa taustalla ukrainanlipun sininen ja keltainen ja edessä punaisia kukkia.

Artwork by a Color Up Peace workshop participant Kateryna Drobakha. Photo: Lisa Glybchenko

In general, Color Up Peace aims to encourage participants to think about peace and what peace means to them; to create opportunities for sharing visions of peace through artistic and digital means; to foster dialogue through collective artmaking; to challenge the abundance of violence-centered visuals in the media and popular culture; and to employ digital visual artmaking as a peacebuilding tool. My motivation to start Color Up Peace in 2016 was to help people like me – who suffered from Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine since 2014.

Vasemmalla pieni tyttö pitää auringonkukkaa kädessään, oikealla sama tyttö ääriviivoin piirrettynä.

This photo was taken in the sunflower field in Vinnytsia Oblast, Ukraine. Photo: Kateryna & Veronika Drobakha. Outline and image design by Lisa Glybchenko.

I think it is in every peacebuilding startup that the founder would wish their startup did not even exist – that there would not be a need for that, that there would be no violence and cruelty that make such startups and the services they offer needed. And I never imagined I would be helping Ukrainians in Tampere in 2022–2023, after 8 years of collective suffering for the participants, myself – and lots of other Ukrainians in Ukraine and abroad.

Participants came from different places in Finland: not only Tampere, but, for instance, Vaasa and Jämsä. Part of these workshops were supported by Operation Pirkanmaa and the City of Tampere.

I recently also finished a Nordic-Ukrainian initiative to create art-based support programs for my compatriots in Ukraine and abroad like in their host communities in Vaasa and Tampere in Finland; Reykjavik in Iceland; Kyiv, Kharkiv and Chernivtsi in Ukraine. The programs were supported by The Nordic Culture Point and they attracted around 250 participants and received extremely positive feedback. Within the programs 390 artbooks were printed and distributed in Ukraine, Finland and Iceland. New projects are already in implementation too!

Pöydällä lojuvia mustia värityskirjoja, joiden kannessa kukka keltaisessa pallossa ja teksti Color Up Peace Ukraine.

Latest coloring books by Color Up Peace. Cover design, layout and illustrations: Lisa Glybchenko.

Some new opportunities for helping Ukrainians and generally people affected by wars came out of these workshops. With the virtual education company Claned we collaborated to create the virtual version of the workshops so that people in other places around Finland and in other countries could join and have this experience too. The workshops are self-paced and available both in Ukrainian and English.

I think the most important highlight for me so far has been that I could see that the workshops make a difference and that I was able to help holistically, as well as use my skills and talents to help. I also learned a lot from the people I worked with and from their experience of restarting their lives in a new place they did not choose and may barely know anything about. Based on this, I think it is important to highlight how it would be good to continue supporting Ukrainians:

  • creating employment opportunities that do not require fluency in Finnish
  • mentoring Ukrainians about certain topics of interest, like entrepreneurship or NGO management, as they are done in Finland, since it could be very different in Ukraine
  • creating ways for connections between the Ukrainians under temporary protection in Finland and the Ukrainian diaspora, since they could be scattered around the country with difficulties moving around
  • asking Ukrainians, including diaspora members, what kind of help they may need
  • and realizing that supporting Ukraine and Ukrainians is essential for everyone who appreciates freedom.
Pitkähiuksinen nainen harmaassa villapaidassa ja silmälaseissa nojaa seinään, jossa on vaaleanpunaisia graffiteja.

Artist Lisa Glybchenko is a researcher and an entrepreneur of the startup Color Up Peace from Crimea, Ukraine. She is preparing a doctoral dissertation at the University of Tampere, in which she studies Digital Visual Images as Security-Building Tools. She has participated in the design and implementation of the visual identity of the Tampere Freedom of Speech Event in September 2023.

One more thing to note is that Ukrainians in Ukraine and away from Ukraine are also simultaneously doing a lot of decolonization work to protect their culture, and the ways their culture is part of their everyday lives even abroad. It is important to make space for this kind of work and actively support the needed conversations and initiatives, even if they are difficult to hold.

Follow the Facebook and Instagram pages of Color Up Peace for more information!

facebook.com/coloruppeace

instagram.com/coloruppeace

When archaeology meets contemporary glass art and advanced photonics

Text: Laeticia Petit and Ella Varvio

“In this project archaeology meets contemporary glass art and advanced photonics,” say Professor Laeticia Petit (on the right) and Glass Artist Ella Varvio. Photo: Jonne Renvall / Tampere University

“In this project archaeology meets contemporary glass art and advanced photonics,” says Professor Laeticia Petit (on the right) and Glass Artist Ella Varvio. Photo: Jonne Renvall / Tampere University

Glazing means a thin layer of glass decorating the surface of the pottery. Specific glazes were chosen for this project based on their color and texture which are due to the presence of crystals and metallic particles. Especial interest is in tiny gas bubbles inside the glaze, the interior of bubbles being covered with an exceedingly fine translucent nano-crystalline film.

The samples were provided to the Tampere University for research by Æli Barjesteh, the Director of ASET Stiftung Ltd. The composition of glazes has been analyzed to identify the elements in the glazes and also to evidence the presence of bubbles and crystals. This analysis not only provides information of ancient Chinese glazes but opens up the opportunity to design new materials for both photonics and contemporary glass art based on the composition of the glazes.

The research conducted by Professor Laeticia Petit at Tampere University as part of the PhotonArt project has for objective to develop glasses with similar elements and textures than those found in ancient Chinese glazes. The new glasses are designed with properties suitable for photonics applications, which is the main research activity of Professor Petit and of the research performed during the first year of the project by Reynald Ponte. The findings can be also applied in art as the glazes have beautiful reflectance and impressive colors. Glass artist Ella Varvio is exploring these colors in her blown glass artworks.

The research by Reynald Ponte has investigated the connection between the color of the glaze and their composition. Different advanced scanning methods like scanning electron microscope, X-ray fluorescence and Raman mapping were used to evidence the presence of bubbles and to identify the elements present in the glazes. For Petit, this first step of PhotonArt project has allowed the team to advance the fundamental understanding of glass structures and optical property relationships.

The new set of materials and colors reveal huge potential.

The findings that will result into applications in modern photonics are applicable also in art, but from a different perspective: color expression, visual language and different visual textures. Photo: Jonne Renvall / Tampere University

The findings that will result into applications in modern photonics are applicable also in art, but from a different perspective: color expression, visual language and different visual textures. Photo: Jonne Renvall / Tampere University

Based on the composition analysis, it is possible to create new glass recipes for artistic use and in this project, various glasses have been prepared with similar colors to those of the Chinese glazes. Ella Varvio’s art combines blown glass with engravings and illustrations. For Varvio, the new set of materials and colors reveal huge potential. She considers a privilege to get tailored colors to work with; melting the glasses, blowing and sculpting them, grinding and engraving will reveal how the glasses suit for small studio use.

Next step in the project is to work on the development of novel active optical glasses which contain also metallic nanoparticles as in the Chinese glazes. Understanding the formation of metallic nanoparticles in glasses with various compositions will have a significant impact on the photonics community as this work will lead to the development of new glasses with enhanced spectroscopic performance, useful for optical device applications for example. This will also impact other science related communities, for example metallic nanoparticles in bioactive glass could be used as new biomedical devices.

– This PhotonArt project allows us to also promote the research conducted at Tampere University on Glass Science which is of great importance especially since United Nations approved 2022 as the International Year of Glass. Indeed, although glass supports many vital technologies and facilitates sustainability and a green world, glass material yet often goes unnoticed, Petit says.

In 2020 the Pirkanmaa Regional Fund awarded a grant to Professor Laeticia Petit and her working group. The grant was awarded for a multidisciplinary three year Art-Science project aiming to design unique contemporary glass art master pieces and photonics materials inspired by ancient and historic Chinese glazes.