The CFUS Medwidsky Grant
14 May 2020
Artist: Lindsay Sorell
The $900 Bohdan Medwidsky Grant was awarded to Maria Mayerchyk and Lesia Savedchuk to create an alternative exhibit narrative - a story for children for the Chasing Gophers Barefoot exhibit. It tells the story of a girl living on the Prairies in the 1930s. Read more about the exhibit here.
This grant is provided by the Canadian Foundation for Ukrainian Studies from the Bohdan Medwidsky Fund which was established in 2017 to support the study of Ukrainian culture and traditions at the Kule Folklore Centre. This is the first year the grant was awarded.
Maria Mayerchyk and Lesia Savedchuk work as a team on this project. Their knowledge and skills complement each other and are indispensable for a project like this. Maria holds a PhD in History with a specialization in Ethnology from the Rylsky Institute of Art, Folklore and Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. In 2019-2020, she has been awarded the Huculak Research Fellowship and has been working at the Kule Folklore Centre, focusing specifically on the Local Culture Project interviews. Lesia Savedchuk is the author of a series of 19 books in Ukrainian for beginning readers published by Dzvin Publishers in the 80’s. Among her popular titles are Tomchyk, The Purple Planet, and Cookies with Mustard. She has also written a series of 5 books about Ukrainian saints for upper elementary readers (in English), published by Novalis Press.
This project will help the Kule Folklore Centre to support the study of Ukrainian culture and traditions and will create an educational resource that can be used by many.