Connecting Generations Creative Project

At Kryla, we believe that cultural heritage is not just something to preserve — it’s something to pass on, live through, and reimagine together. With support from Birmingham City Council and in partnership with North Birmingham 4 Ukraine, we are proud to lead Connecting Generations — a transformative intergenerational project that brings together the Ukrainian community across age groups to co-create, connect, and celebrate shared identity.

More than a series of meetings, Connecting Generations is an active cultural exchange. Eighteen young people from Kryla Youth Club and seven older Ukrainian adults come together to share life stories, explore traditions, and learn from each other’s experiences. Through open dialogue, storytelling, and creative expression, participants explore the deep cultural threads that bind generations:

🔹 How did people grow up, learn, play, and build community decades ago?
🔹 What values, songs, customs, and everyday moments are worth preserving?
🔹 How do we pass these on in a world that’s rapidly changing?

With each meeting, they discover more and more about each other. The interest grows, and the conversations don’t stop. They talk non-stop, with energy and joy. We play games from different times, run quizzes, and talk about everything — from education and family to culture and everyday life. What seemed like a gap between generations disappears. They just talk. Like friends.

“It was a real eye-opener to see how smart young people are these days. What I only realised at 40 — they already know at 16” Vadym Martynenko, 61 y.o.
“It was so interesting to hear how they lived without phones — and had to walk miles just to see a friend” Radyslav Ievstigneiev, 15 y.o.
“Can you imagine? They used to walk to school for miles because there weren’t many schools around” Ariadna Bozdugan, 18 y.o.
“They would gather together to watch TV — the whole building — because there were only one or two televisions” Mariia Hlavatska, 16 y.o.

But Connecting Generations is more than conversation — it’s also a celebration of creativity. Each story becomes a spark for artistic expression.

Together, youth and elders previously co-created a unique book for children. Through interviews and storytelling, older participants shared their memories of childhood, culture, and everyday life in Ukraine. The teenagers then took on the creative task of transforming these stories into a comic book — writing the script, illustrating the scenes, and designing the entire publication themselves.

The result was more than a creative product — it was a vibrant, accessible way to preserve cultural memory for younger generations. This book became a bridge between the past and the present, told in a language children could understand and enjoy.

Now, in the next phase of Connecting Generations, the group is working on a new book for adults — a rich collection of personal stories, historical context, and fascinating cultural facts.