User:Liza Kukharska/Arsenal Book Festival

International festival "Book Arsenal" was founded in 2011 by Mystetskyi Arsenal and is held on the venue each spring. It's a nation-wide intellectual event in Ukraine, which promotes the development and cooperation of literary, visual, music and theater scenes, raises and contemplates important questions of human existence, as well as society and culture, and it stimulates pro-active stance of attendees and participants. Since its foundation, Arsenal Book Festival was attended by more than 500 writes, poets, philosophers, designers, illustrators and expert publishers from more than 50 countries.

In 2019 London-based «International Publishing Industry Excellence Awards» recognized Arsenal Book Festival the best literary festival of the year.

Beginning
The first Arsenal Book Festival was held from May 28 to June 1, 2011. The curator of the first festival was Olha Zhuk. The first event defined the structure of the future festivals and have two components — exhibition-fair of publishers and varied festival programm:


 * master classes, lectures, discussions
 * art book, comics and book illustration exhibition
 * events for children
 * massive charity event dedicated to the International Day for Protection of Children
 * poetic and music performances, concerts, screenings
 * signings, meetings with famous writers, translators, critics, artists
 * presentations of the newest interesting books and projects by Ukrainian and foreign publishers
 * business meetings, pitching session for publishers and authors
 * special projects for Ukrainian and international mass-media festivals and publishers.

Focus theme
Starting from 2017 Arsenal Book Festival chooses the focus theme of the festival which will determine agenda and events. Each focus theme will have a curator. "Laughter. Fear. Power" has become the 2017 focus theme curated by Tetyana Teren. In 2018 the theme was "The Project of Future", in 2019 - "Neighbourhood: Open discussion". Both themes were curated by Vira Baldyniuk. In 2020 the subject theme was "Optimist sceptists", while Rostyslav Semkiv was chosen to curate it.

Reference

 * Official page of Arsenal Book Festival
 * Official page of Arsenal Book Festival (second year, 2012)