Un/Archiving Post/Industry

Dr. Iryna Sklokina, Viktoriia Grivina

This project was implemented by the Center for Urban History and the University of St Andrews in partnership with Mariupol Local History Museum, Pokrovsk Historical Museum, and Donetsk Regional Museum of Local History. It was supported by the EU’s House of Europe and the UK’s Global Challenges Research Fund.

Industrialization is one of today's key historical narratives. Industry, its legacies, and post-histories have shaped Ukrainian city spaces, lifestyles, and economic relations.

Industry's legacies include not only cast iron, coal, and machinery, but also the cultural images it produced of itself through institutions such as centers of culture, factory newsletters, museums, hobby groups, and photo labs at factories.

Visual media, such as photos and videos, produced images of dedicated workers and engineers, production successes and achievements. But these media were also deployed beyond the monopoly of institutions: more readily available in the 20th century, photo and video cameras were used by workers for hobbies, creativity, and socializing, to document their families, friends and colleagues, and among photo amateurs from different cities.

The economic transformations of the 1990s resulted in fragmentation, and even the loss of industrial archives, both institutional and private. At the same time, the rapid destruction of industrial buildings, the redevelopment of industrial areas into housing and office facilities, and the transformation of plants into creative hubs often generated feelings of loss, and demand and readiness to preserve what is left after industry and what constitutes its cultural post-history.

It was for this reason that the "Un/archiving Post/industry" project was created. Its aims were to collect surviving industrial heritage collections and create digital archives illustrating the work, leisure, space, and architecture, festivities and everyday life of industrial cities, plants and factories, and industrial communities at work and at home.

The project had the goal of establishing a dialogue between generations (through interviews with the former workers, engineers, photographers and video amateurs who documented industry), between different regions (that are stereotypically believed to be industrial, or otherwise), between museums and archive owners, and between Ukrainian and international researchers, artists, and activists.

In the spring of 2020, the project was granted funding from the House of Europe, and in summer 2020 co-funding was received from the UK’s Global Challenges Research Fund. The project involved the digitization of photos, videos, and audio materials. All digitized materials were published online through the Center’s Urban Media Archive. Collections are open access and available to researchers and other interested parties on request. In parallel with the digitization work, we conducted research into the cultural infrastructure surrounding the industry through archival consultation and interviews with former workers, photographers and amateur filmmakers. In July 2021, we ran a summer camp with artists and researchers at Pokrovsk Historical Museum to give the digitized collections a “second life.” Student projects at the summer school were exhibited at the Pokrovsk Zalizniak-fest.

In July 2021, the summer school residency took place in Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. It brought together museum workers, researchers and artists with the aim to give a “new life” to the digitized collections. As a result, an exhibition and brochure presented all the participants’ creative projects. One more result of the project is the online exhibition “Ecology in Focus” dedicated to the role of visual media in the formation of ecological consciousness.

In 2023, the project won the prestigious European Heritage Awards / Europa Nostra Awards 2023 in the category of Citizen Engagement and Awareness Raising. For 21 years, these awards have been a key tool for recognizing the value of cultural and natural heritage for European society, the economy, and the environment.

The digitized collections include:

Related publications, presentations, public discussions on the topic

  • img

  • img


Other research projects


Other research focuses

Cities, Wars, and Recoveries in 20th Century Eastern Europe

Cities, Wars, and Recoveries in 20th Century Eastern Europe

This focus incorporates the history of the cities and towns in the eastern parts of Europe, both on and behind the front lines, during periods of belligerence and post-war recovery.

Details
Documenting Experiences of War

Documenting Experiences of War

We have involved our capacity and expertise to document the experiences of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine as historical and/or legal evidence, but also as a way to withstand the invasion.

Details
Professionals, Expertise, and Planned Urbanity

Professionals, Expertise, and Planned Urbanity

This focus on planned cities, towns, and districts in socialist societies explores the visions of planners, experts, and decision-makers, who were all involved in the construction and experience of planned urbanity.

Details
Public History and the City: Engaging and Reflecting the Pasts

Public History and the City: Engaging and Reflecting the Pasts

This focus brings together research on the forms, formats and multiple agendas in engaging with the past from urban perspectives and in urban settings.

Details
The Social City: Histories of Mobility, Status, Gender and Welfare

The Social City: Histories of Mobility, Status, Gender and Welfare

This research focus extends the established approaches to the history of modern Lviv, centered on the history of the formation of national communities, by addressing other categories of social divisions: gender, age, class, and group.

Details
Urban Cultural Infrastructures: Creators, Managers, Audiences in the Modern City

Urban Cultural Infrastructures: Creators, Managers, Audiences in the Modern City

This research focus aims to expand our understanding of the ways infrastructures shape creative culture in the modern city.

Details
Visual Regimes, Materialities, and Technologies

Visual Regimes, Materialities, and Technologies

This research focus is related to visual practices and historical or social ways of seeing. Within it, we focus on the study of historical changes in technology, imagination, and politics, and how they influence the transformation of visual practices and sensibilities.

Details