Mamay-fest

Mamay-Fest: from Past to Future

The All-Ukrainian historic and culturological festival Mamay-Fest was founded in 2008, initiated by the Museum of History of the city of Kamianske (former Dniprodzerzhynsk until 2016). The main idea of the festival is to renovate the historic memory of Ukrainian people, to shape the national identity and to unite culturally and spiritually Ukrainians on the basis of a common and idealistic image of the popular hero, Cossack Mamay.

Mamay-Fest is held under auspice of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine, with support of the City Council of Kamianske. In 2010, the sculpture composition “Mamay” was installed on the territory of museum.

The festival has three artistic lines: 1 museum festival of objects with encoded people memory; 2 visual art, music and players on traditional Ukrainian music instrument, kobza; 3 modern folk groups, poetry, films, etc.

Within the frames of the festival there are collective and personal art and documentary exhibitions, children creative exhibitions, presentation of new projects, books, films, theatre performances, poetic audio-page “Circle of Word”, communal work (called traditionally in Ukraine “toloka”) at the territory of museum, annual scientific and practical conference “Ukrainian Cossacks in the Ethno-Cultural Space of Naddnipryanschyna (over Dnipro river land)”, etc.

During the decade of festival life, many famous and well-known artists, writers and scientists took part in Mamay-Fest. Numerous objects and pieces of art related to the image of Cossack Mamay were collected by the museum. It is time to create an integrating center in the form of visual and decorative and applied art museum “Cossack Mamay”. Festival organizers and participants consider that such unique cultural object could be very attractive and useful tool for festival and city development.