Svitlana Bovkun
Maker Faire Festival, Kyiv
A festival of technology, invention and creativity held around the world for those who love to make things with their own hands.
Svitlana Bovkun and Yuri Vlasyuk got the idea to promote the maker movement in Ukraine from their devotion to "MAKE" — the American magazine about professional inventors and amateur makers.
The festival follows a regulated format and following their first licensed event in 2015, they benefited from feedback from the public. In addition to the main festival, there was a request to run an additional programme separate from the Maker Faire programme. Sparked by this request, Svitlana enrolled in the Creative Enterprise Ukraine training sessions. She hoped to learn how to develop strategically an independent component of the festival, test their theory and get feedback. She achieved her goal: she looked deeper into the idea and realising that she needed to start with the online platform makerhub.org, she developed long-term plans for the project.
About the training
It was during the training that Svitlana understood that grant programmes were not always suited to every team's needs. She was more interested in proving useful to their community and drawing support from it rather than becoming grant dependent. The Maker Faire model involves collaboration with other festivals, foundations and associations with similar values.
According to Svitlana, one of the greatest values of the training programme is the other group members. They are able to look at your project from different perspectives and offer solutions based on their own experience.
Plans
Svitlana’s priority is the development of a standing Maker Faire community and the creation of another. A second Maker Faire event is scheduled for Dnipro.
The team also continues to work on a business model that lies outside the Maker Faire framework. In order to maintain dialogue with the makers and participants of the festival, the team will further develop the makerhub.org platform.
Key Figures:
● 5,000 visitors at the most recent Maker Faire;
● The team has grown from 5 to 10 people;
● 10 festivals held in the cities of Kyiv, Lviv, Odessa and Kharkiv;
● The Kyiv Maker Faire Meetup group has 400+ people.