Alumni of IWC 2018: Creative Youth Seminar: an experience of creation and artist’s life

Creative Youth Seminar is a yearly event, held every May in Kyiv and organized by charity fund “Smoloskyp”. It connects young prose writers, poets, journalists, cinematographers, animators, artists, political studies students and volunteers from all over Ukraine and puts them in creative environment for 5 days.  Creative Youth Seminar 2019 received warm feedback from participants and lecturers as well and proved to be another great event that unites writing people like alumni of International Writing Camp “Write in Armenia”.

This year’s seminar celebrated its 25th anniversary and the theme “Demiurge games” was chosen as one that represents best the potential 80 talented youngsters have in the life of their country. The activities of CYS (Creative Youth Seminar) included lectures from famous writers, PR managers, politicians etc, 4 master classes (cinematography, prose writing, animation, performance), spontaneous poetry readings and a political game. While the purpose of master classes was to go through the whole pipeline of creation in the span of 5 days (shoot a movie/create a cartoon/write a novella/prepare a performance), a political game depicted the process of presidential elections which is especially important for Ukrainian youngsters to know in the light of latest events (the election of new President of Ukraine – Volodymyr Zelenskyi).

Among the participants were IWC 2018 alumni Oksana Lebedivna and Kateryna Orlovska. Oksana participated in fantasy/horror/cosmic opera/utopia prose writing master class led by Rostyslav Semkiv, one of Ukraine’s leading Creative Writing teachers while Kateryna created an animated horror story.

Daria Piskozub, another IWC 2018 alumna, headed the organizational committee of 10+ people who created CYS 2019. She fought for the position of CYS President yet remained at her Prime Minister post for another year. Besides taking part in political game, she was able to write a novella alongside Oksana Lebedivna and take part in shooting of sci-fi thriller.