“PEREMOHA LAB”: Discover Ukrainian maker space where ideas turn into reality

The story of a new maker space in the front-line city of Chernihiv started with a local public organization, "Eco City." The environmental nonprofit was founded in 2014 to raise awareness among locals about proper battery disposal, hold workshops for children, and train future eco-mentors.

The NGO independently opened a waste sorting station in 2020 before the authorities addressed the issue of city recycling. The "Supersorters" center, supported by the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs, accepted over two dozen types of recyclables, held workshops, tours, and educational events for schoolchildren, and helped locals learn waste sorting. The location quickly gained popularity and sorted 20 tons of recyclables in the first work season.

A year later, the NGO "Eco City" decided to dispel the myth that plastic isn't recycled in Ukraine and learn to work with this material. The organization signed a cooperation agreement with the Chernihiv National Polytechnic University to develop environmental initiatives and establish a lab. The "Plastic Fantastic" recycling workshop, set up on one of the university's campuses, allowed activists and students to learn to recycle plastic and share this knowledge and skills with everyone interested.

February 2022 changed everything. Russia's full-scale invasion forced the nonprofit to suspend all sorting projects. The territory of the sorting station suffered significant damage from Russian shelling and became inaccessible to activists. The plastic recycling workshop also faced shutdown.

A year of the break the "Eco City" had to take ended with a new idea. Serhii Bezborodko, the head of the organization and a Chernihiv Polytechnic graduate, was determined to keep developing maker initiatives in the city. On behalf of the NGO, he proposed setting up an open Fab Lab or maker space at the university — a collaborative workspace equipped with fabrication tools and technology that allows participants to create, invent, and prototype physical objects.

Chernihiv Polytechnic supported the visionary activist and agreed that the challenges and needs Ukrainians faced during the full-scale war showed that manual labor skills and knowing how to handle tools were necessary.

"Skills and knowledge in maker culture are relevant not only during wartime but will also become an integral part of post-war reconstruction," says Bezborodko, who, together with like-minded people, set out to create a place where every resident of Chernihiv could realize their ideas and potential — "make anything with anything."

Collaboration and community space 

Activists set up the future Fab Lab in the cinema building under the university's management. The movie theater named "Peremoha," which means "victory" in Ukrainian, had been unused for several years and needed significant repairs. On May 1, 2023, it became the official home of the Peremoha Startup and Innovation Center, with Serhii Bezborodko appointed the head of the newly created venture. In the summer of the same year, the "Eco City" team, students, teachers, volunteers, and the Tolocar mobile maker space team, who came to support the initiative of Chernihiv residents, began renewing and rethinking the cinema, transforming it into a domain of making and creativity.

Maker spaces are sometimes called "new libraries," but there are tools here instead of books. Such a space aims to provide the community free access to modern equipment and technologies that help bring ideas to life. These can be prototypes of new products, artworks, models, or any other objects.

"In the future, this flexible space will provide the most advanced infrastructure for developing innovative projects. We seek to create favorable conditions for creativity and interdisciplinary cooperation to foster education, science, and entrepreneurship," says the center's leader. 

Collaboration and community building in the former movie theater began during the renovation phase, as all the project participants did the work themselves. In just two months, students and volunteers replaced windows and doors, installed new lighting, tore out the old linoleum, cleaned the original granite floor to a shine, and restored the wooden flooring. They also painted the walls, fixed the ceiling, installed new wiring and internet, and replaced heating batteries.

"We have two scenarios for the development of our center. One of them is fast — we first put the spaces in order, making them dry, warm, and safe, and changed their function," says the lab initiator, Serhii Bezborodko. "But this is only 10% of the premises. Ahead of us is the repair of three screening rooms in an emergency condition, two of which have leaking roofs."

The team has already conducted an urban analysis to study how three auditoriums worked and their needed resources, developed an architectural concept, and found funding. 

"This is a great victory. We hope to have a newly repaired roof this spring — modern and thermally modernized," Bezborodko adds.

The team plans to improve the event area, creating various laboratories and studios, and wants to preserve one of the cinemas specifically for watching non-commercial Ukrainian auteur movies. The location has the potential to develop for the benefit of the entire city.

The NGO "Eco City" keeps up with its environmental mission and wants to make the public space near the renovated cinema greener and more sustainable. The volunteers will reduce the amount of concrete, plant more vegetation, replace old flowers with perennials, collect rainwater from the roof, and measure and research how greening influences air quality. Through many single changes, the team wants to show an example of how modern cities can and should work amid global challenges.

The nonprofit is considering reopening the waste sorting station as the residents of Chernihiv are ready to continue supporting the initiative and miss a convenient location lost due to the war.

PEREMOHA for Victory

The renovated rooms in the cinema, covering an area of several thousand square meters, are now home to the PEREMOHA LAB digital workshop. It is the first maker space in Chernihiv that marks the start of a full-blown Fab Lab at the former cinema. PEREMOHA LAB opened in late July and, since then, has hosted many events to foster a maker and creativity culture.

The center attracts new residents, participants, and visitors through tours, workshops, and lectures. The lab has held over 20 educational tours for schoolchildren alone, showing its tools for computer-aided design, 3D printing, laser cutting, milling, and other instruments. Everything you may see in the workshop, including the furniture, was made with this equipment by volunteers and students.

"Maker culture and self-sufficiency are incredibly important right now, especially given the war and the fact that we are a front-line region," says the head of the maker space, Bezborodko. "Our experience shows that 'only makers will survive,' meaning those who can fend for themselves; those who know how to work with tools, understand the difference between a mill and a lathe, and know how to make what they need with their own hands."

He recalls that he had to do many things on his own when Chernihiv was under Russian blockade at the beginning of the full-scale war.

"I made a bed from old pallets, built a greenhouse from old windows, extracted water, and made it fit for consumption. My skills in working with tools, engineering thinking, and ingenuity helped me improve the quality of my life, work, and survive in any circumstances," says the activist.

The plastic recycling workshop "Plastic Fantastic," which we mentioned earlier, is also part of the maker space and, according to Bezborodko, plays a vital role in promoting sustainable and creative approaches to production.

Workshop residents experiment with secondary plastic use and develop new methods and technologies for its recycling. By the way, Rubryka recently reported that signs for schoolchildren in the village of Kulikivka were made from plastic lids in this workshop.

Opportunities for future professionals

"Through our maker space and Startup Center, we also want to become a kind of link between the city and the university — a place where students gain practical skills in working with tools, materials, and spaces and deviate a bit from academic skills by executing ideas, projects, designs, prototypes, and so on," the center's forward-thinking organizer, Serhii Bezborodko.

He says the university is already changing and acquiring more features of classical European universities. Its students and teachers attend many internships, consult with foreign colleagues, and seek to improve the quality of education.

"We want to involve young people, both in the life of the university, the neighborhood, and the city as a whole because we see great potential in them," Bezborodko adds.

The startup center is developing workshops and courses for future builders, architects, and designers studying at the university on how to use construction waste accumulated from buildings destroyed by Russian forces. The classes will also teach young people how to use secondary and biodegradable materials in future projects, how to design to produce less waste, and what alternative energy sources are available. Young professionals can all use the new knowledge in Ukraine's reconstruction.

The initiative's founder is pleased that the new maker space and its open environment inspire visitors to their projects. For example, participants of the UPSHIFT youth program at PEREMOHA LAB have started a series of workshops for schoolchildren as part of their own "Eco-Conscious Planet" project. They introduce children to equipment, teach them how to recycle paper, and make decorations from recycled plastic.