12 FEATURE 13

ten miles from the border. This was at the time

when there were lots of cars queuing up - you

would see it on TV. It was just absolutely manic,

and everyone was trying to get out.

“My grandmother still had to walk to the

border. She’s fit - in her youth she was quite

athletic - but she was still an 80 year-old

woman on her own. It was late February with

snow and rain. My mother had made sure that

she got the bus driver’s phone number, just to

make sure that she was on her way. We also

made sure that my grandmother had everyone’s

phone numbers so that she could give those to

anyone to get in touch with us at any point.

There was a period of about fifteen hours

between getting off the bus and crossing the

border when we didn’t hear from her.

“My mother then said: “You need to go and

get her because we just don’t know what is

going on.” So my mother was then sending her

own daughter into a war zone - where her

mother was already kind of lost.”

At this stage Odessa had not yet been heavily

hit, and with many phone calls and texts

Juliette met up with her grandmother in

Moldova. She had been picked up by a church

group who took her to a refugee centre.

Juliette said: “I stayed with her there and was

waiting for the UK visa to open up. The issue

was that the authorities had considered a

12 13

I

In a war zone cultural works can be

among the first to become lost. Two

Ukrainian women living in

Edinburgh have become determined

to set up an online museum to keep

the heritage of their country alive.

They are concerned that there is

“news fatigue” about Ukraine and its struggle

to repel the latest Russian invasion. They hope

that the new Museum of Ukrainian Craft and

Culture Scotland (MUCCS) will be one way to

keep Ukraine in the frame.

Ukrainians Juliette Lichman (top left) and

Zhenya Dove (bottom left) have collaborated

on setting up the online museum where

Ukrainian culture can be celebrated. They are

both members of The Scottish Parliamentary

Cross Party Group for promoting Ukrainian

Culture in Scotland.

After caring for her grandmother in Scotland

for a year, Juliette felt a “great absence” in her

life, which is when the idea of a museum

emerged.

She said: “I work as a cultural heritage

photographer so there is an element of being

around collections and museum objects and

telling their story. There’s a lot of cultural

heritage destruction in Ukraine, and there are

attacks on Ukrainian identity. So it is not just

that all the paintings have been ruined or

looted, but more that it is being erased and

destroyed for the sake of it. I thought there

WHEN RUSSIA LAUNCHED its invasion of

Ukraine on 24 February 2022, Juliette’s 80

year-old maternal grandmother was living in

Odessa on her own. Juliette’s parents had

moved to Australia some time before, when she

was about six years old, leaving Ukraine to

emigrate to Oz. She has been living in

Edinburgh for about ten years now.

Juliette said: “Basically my grandmother didn’t

really have much support. We eventually

managed through Instagram and Telegram to

find a way to get her out. She got a bus from

Odessa towards Moldova. But it let her off about

must be a way of supporting it and bringing it

to a UK audience. I noticed that a lot of people

in Ukraine were desperately selling off so many

things which I knew would then go into private

collections and never be seen again. I worried

that they might be cut up and made into

cushions or whatever rather than being

Two women in Edinburgh are working to ensure that heritage is not lost despite the

brutal Russian invasion and destruction of their homeland 2,000 miles away

Putting Ukrainian art

and culture in the frame

Grandmother flees to safety

Above and below -

Juliette’s granny enjoyed

living in Edinburgh.

Below - Maria

Prymachenko’s art

features on the new online

museum

family scheme to mean children and parents

but not grandparents. Thankfully, that was

changed and my father told me to get to the

visa centre as soon as they opened. Already at

that time of the morning there were tons of

people queuing up with everyone wanting a

v i s a .”

This was the beginning of a six week wait for

a visa, caught between an old paper-based

system and a newer online process. Juliette

then took her grandmother on a 12-hour bus

journey to wait in a Romanian airport hotel for

the visa to be emailed. Nothing happened for

about two weeks, but thankfully a friend came

up with a flat in Bucharest for them to live in

for a while. Finally the visa arrived in Moldova

but still had to be sent on to Romania for them.

Juliette had left Edinburgh in early March

and it took several weeks before she was able to

return with her grandmother to the capital

where the pair lived together for a year. The

photographer continued to work full-time and

also care for her grandmother during that year,

but finally they travelled to Australia together

where Juliette left her grandmother in her

mother’s care in Sydney.

(We do not name Juliette’s grandmother as

requested to maintain her privacy.)

The museum is now online http://www.muccs.org

preserved. I began identifying items and

cross-referencing them with objects in

Ukrainian museums. While I am not an expert

I can see the value in these things.”

Juliette and Zhenya have run a Crowdfunder

and although the initial fundraising target has

been met, more donations would be welcomed

for their ongoing work. Zhenya said: “It is such

an honour to be part of this project, when

sharing our culture feels more important than

e v e r .”

The new website shows artwork by famous

Ukrainian artist Maria Prymachenko who was

born on 12 January 1909 into a peasant family

in the Kyiv region. As a child, the outstanding

artist contracted polio and remained disabled

for the rest of her life. Despite this, she amazed

art and beauty connoisseurs with her ingenious

originality in creating new and new images.

The museum is now online http://www.muccs.org