We are delighted to announce the launch of the UAx Bureau based at the ELIA office in Amsterdam. This coincides with the appointment of our UAx Platform Manager, Uliana Furiv who started her role on 1 March 2023.  

 

Uliana hails from Stryi, Lviv region, Ukraine, and has extensive experience in the field of internationalisation in higher education. Before leaving Ukraine last year, she worked at the UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning, managing an international research project on flexible learning pathways. She holds a master's degree from the University of Tampere (Finland) in Research and Innovation in Higher Education, where she completed her dissertation entitled Ukrainian Higher Education During Armed Conflict: Perspectives of Crisis Management. 

 

The UAx Platform directly supports Ukrainian art students through peer mentoring, knowledge exchange, and capacity building of their institutions, in collaboration with art academies and universities across the EU and beyond. At the core of the scheme is the creation of a Sister School network linking art schools, academies and arts universities in Ukraine with ELIA members across Europe. Ten schools have been partnered since the platform’s launch in November 2022 – five from Ukraine, and six from Germany, Estonia, Poland, Sweden, the Netherlands, and the Czech Republic.  

 

The Ukrainian higher art institutions are now ELIA members, and their membership has been funded for the next three years. They will gain the support of the 280-strong ELIA community of higher arts education institutions. Not to mention ELIA’s programming, resources, networks, and opportunities for staff and students. In addition, bursaries will be made available to individual students to support their studies and development as artists. 

 

The UAx Platform Project is funded by the Abakanowicz Arts and Culture Charitable Foundation (AACCF) which began operations in 2019. It supports scholarly work on the artist, and projects such as the UAx Platform, which demonstrate the artist Magdalena Abakanowicz’s belief in art as a visual language within cultures and dynamic force in contemporary society. 

 

Uliana is looking forward to leading the UAx Bureau into its next phase— 

 

“I am very inspired to lead the UAx project that so proactively aims to address both the short and long-term needs and challenges facing Ukrainian higher art education. In the short term, the UAx community will work together to strengthen the resilience of art universities and academies in Ukraine during the phases of crisis and recovery. In the long term, the UAx community will promote the development of Ukrainian art universities and academies as active members of the European higher education space in the arts.” 

 

On 1 March, 2023 the UAx community gathered to share and discuss the cooperation between the UAx Sister Schools. Now the UAx team headed by Uliana, along with Programme Coordinator Mariya Sharma, is busy developing upcoming activities, scholarship and mentorship programmes with the schools involved. Stay tuned for more news on the UAx project coming soon.