“Fairy map of Ukraine”

The Ukrainian art agency Tradytsia has began creating a fairy map that will contain all the infor­mation about the birthplaces of the heroes from Ukrainian folk and modern fairy tales.

The project organizers announced that the first heroes would be the characters from the famous Ukrai­nian epic Kyrylo Kozhumiaka and Kotyho­rosh­ko, shorty Neznaiko and Koza-Dereza, whose birthplace is supposed to be in Kyiv region.

The locations of monuments and events dedicated to the national heroes, will be marked on the map. There will also be annotations and le­gends indicating the appearance of those heroes in a given place. According to the project’s authors, they agreed with their Muscovite colleagues, who are working on a Russian version of the map, to share information about new heroes and legends found by regional historians and ethnographers.

The creators of the fairy maps note that this agreement will help to avoid the apperance of the same heroes on both maps. It will also help in a common search for new traces in stories about the fairy tales and their writers. The main goal of this project is the promotion of Ukrainian fairy tales. Tradytsia initiated the project. Jamal Badan, a Palestinian artist who lives in Ukraine, is painting the largest picture in the country: 15 meters tall and 20 meters wide. The author calls his creation a Noah’s Ark that is to save humanity from hostility.