 Hello and welcome to the ArtsLink Assembly 2023. This is day two. Some of us are in Chicago, but many of us are in Ukraine. And I'm very happy that many of you are able to join us from different parts of the world live online. I'm also happy that this is really a very happy moment. And you'll hear in a moment from Volodymyr from the Ukrainian Institute, because they are attending the opening of a new arts center, which is being led by actually an ArtsLink alum, Bozhenia Polinska. So we're incredibly happy that at this moment there can be a new arts facility opening in Ukraine. We'll, I'm sure, hear more about that in a moment. So today, day two of the ArtsLink Assembly, we're launching a new strategy document for Ukraine. It's called Beyond Greener Grass. And the document has been produced by the Ukrainian Institute in Kiev, along with the independent think tank SEDOS. So you'll be hearing from them about the process of creating the document in a moment. But the strategy really, as you will hear, emerged from last year's ArtsLink Assembly. We gathered in Warsaw with over 40 artists and arts leaders from Ukraine, really to look at how the future of culture could be evolved and developed both now during the war itself, but also what changes needed to be considered and implemented for the future of culture in Ukraine. The document is available. You can find the link on our website at ccrtslink.org. It's also on the Ukrainian Institute's website in both Ukrainian and English. So the strategy is framed around the idea of cultural reconstruction. And it's looking, of course, at what that means from now, not after the war, but the implications now. So it's important that we consider this is not about buildings. This is about a different kind of infrastructure. This is about the notion of how we can support individual artists and the independent cultural networks that now have to operate in a completely different context. And with many artists now dispersed around Europe, the kind of war-enforced diaspora. So the strategy focuses on people and the impact Russia's war of aggression has had on the cultural field and the new immense diaspora of displaced artists and cultural leaders who've been forced to find safe spaces now around Europe and beyond. So through this three-hour session today, we'll hear of the current cultural context in Ukraine during the war and get a sense of how the strategy document has been developed. And then we'll have a short break. After that, we'll hear from key leaders in different areas of cultural practice about how the ideas in the strategy document relate to their specific areas, but also looking at more critical areas for how to move forward, and how this document offers us a roadmap on what we need to be working towards in order to really establish a firm structural, cultural basis for the evolution of practice in Ukraine. So I'm delighted that the director of the Ukrainian Institute, Volodymyr Sheikov, can join us today. Live, I think, from the Jam Factory. So Volodymyr, great to see you. Thank you so much for joining us. How is it to be at the Jam Factory today? Hello, Simon. It's a pleasure to join you in today. A less digitally, but I hope that today we'll bring a lot of insightful, interesting conversations to all of you. I'm indeed in the west of Ukraine today, where the incredibly exciting new arts center is opening tonight. It's heavy rain in the west, but a great deal of Ukraine's cultural community have gathered, nevertheless, to celebrate this and to pass on their greetings to the team who have worked for many, many years to reconstruct and rebuild the old historic site here in Lviv and imbue it with new meanings and new senses and to transform it into a very, very exciting and beautiful cultural center. Please give our warmest congratulations to Bozhenia and the team now. I will, definitely I will. It's great to also welcome all the participants who have joined today's discussions. And I would like to start with saying thank you to Simon and CC Artsling for our very intense and great and beneficial partnership that has been going on for more than a year. We are very proud to present today the outcome of this of this collaboration and the document and the publication that summarizes a lot of research and analytical work that our teams and also the SEDOS analytical center have carried out to map out the needs and expectations and the most burning and issues that the Ukrainian cultural sphere is facing today and has been facing since the beginning of the full scale invasion. We at the Ukrainian Institute, and by the way, we are for those who don't know us or may have heard about other Ukrainian institutes all over the world, we're a public organization or Ukrainian public organization that is affiliated to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine. And our mandate is to carry out cultural diplomacy internationally on the top of Ukraine so we exist and work to build cultural links and connections between Ukrainian cultural operators, institutions and individuals alike and their partners in many other countries of the world. We work in many disciplines, including visual art, film, music, theater, literature, we also work a lot with international universities to advance Ukrainian studies and to train related research at universities in think tanks worldwide. And we also have an in-house research and analytical department that helps us produce papers and publications such as this one that we're presenting today to inform our work, but also to inform work of other cultural diplomacy operators in Ukraine and internationally to basically to advance their knowledge and understanding of cultural relations processes internationally and Ukrainian cultural sector specifically. We are different organization from one that exists in New York, for example, so the Ukrainian Institute of America is a sister organization that has been working for several, for many decades, effectively in the States, and also there is the Ukrainian Institute in London. We are not related, we're separate entities, but still we know about each other well and we work together on specific projects. Now a little bit about why this piece of work is so important to us, because as an institution that basically works as a mediator and an advisory unit for many organizations and individuals from Ukraine and internationally, we often get questions and inquiries about what is needed by the Ukrainian cultural sector today. Who we can work with in Ukraine if we would like to deliver a cultural project in another country. Can you map out a specific cultural sector for us, so that we know who the main actors are and their agendas and their interests and their organizational capacities, which is equally important today in Ukraine when a lot of cultural organizations have faced, you know, severe budget cuts, but also outflow of stuff and they are really struggling to even survive, let alone deliver, you know, big or significant international program. So having received a lot of such requests and have responded to a lot of such requests, we felt it was a time to actually have, to base our decisions and to base our recommendations, not only on our own individual subjective views or anecdotal evidence, or indeed some patchwork research that has existed in Ukraine internationally about this. We felt it would be great to have, you know, everything in one place with a lot of research and, and, and, you know, my work added to it to present a more holistic view of what Ukraine's cultural sector needs today, and how international operators, actors, organizations, grant programs, institutions, advocates from Ukraine and those really want to support Ukraine's cultural sector, how they can build their programs that they match the context of the needs of the local sector. Unfortunately, we know that some, you know, programs, some initiatives launched by our international partners have not worked the way they had intended them to work, because exactly of that, of some lack of context, lack of understanding, lack of insights into, into the Ukrainian counterparts. So with this piece of work, with this publication, we're really hoping to bridge that gap, to fill those knowledge gaps with, with knowledge that, that would help indeed our, you know, devoted international partners to which we are, of course, to whom we are very, very grateful for their, for their dedication and commitment to the Ukrainian cause, to be better at how they structure their work, program their work, and strategically align that work with, with the local context in Ukraine. So that's the setting and it's the premise of the, of the document of the project that is to be discussed today. I'm really glad to see my good fellow colleagues from, from Ukraine, excellent speakers and excellent experts who will again deliver their remarks and participate in the conversations today. So let me, let me stop here and let me thank again Simon, I can see the ArtsLink and Settos and my team at the Ukrainian Institute for their hard work on, on this event, on this publication and indeed on, on that continuous cooperation that has been in place between our institutions. And I wish you a very productive day or evening depends on where you are today. Vladimir, thank you so much.