Since February 24, 2022, the KhRAM has been forced to work in the collection preservation mode – the works of our collection have been moved to a safe haven until the end of the war. However, since the beginning of March, the staff of the Kharkiv Art Museum has taken an active social and humanitarian position: we started working in the mode of an open creative space – a museum art hub. The first to respond and actively cooperate was the well-known Podillia ethnic group “Ladovytsi”.

The team’s leaders and members enthusiastically and professionally conducted master classes in folk decorative arts, taught folk singing and dancing, and entertained with traditional fun and games. Every day the number of visitors, most of whom were internally displaced people from the war zone, was steadily increasing. Therefore, the idea of cooperation on a permanent basis between KhRAM and Ladovytsi arose from the very need of the historical moment to collect, research, popularize, teach, nurture and develop authentic Ukrainian culture. From now on, all connoisseurs of Ukrainian traditional culture have the opportunity to join the treasures of our people.

The Ladovytsi youth folklore group was founded in 1992 at the folklore department of the Khmelnytsky Children’s School of Arts. The director and spiritual mentor is a talented folklorist Iryna Teliukh. The band’s repertoire is based on folk music and rituals of Naddnistrianske Podillia, a special region with traces of historical settlements of different times, where a special autochthonous tradition of ritual singing has been preserved. The group members are actively engaged in expeditionary and ethnographic activities, where they record song repertoire and learn from folk performers the peculiarities of local dialects, the manner of singing, dancing, and rituals. More than 80 villages have been explored, and many unique samples of everyday life have been collected.

“The Ladovytsi are regular participants in national and international festivals, winners of the Chervona Ruta song contest. The result of the collective’s many years of work is 2 audio albums (“Bakota”, “And the Mother of God walked the world…”), a documentary radio film “Ladovytsi – Soul and Myth” (directed by T. Andriychuk, Khmelnytsky, 2002), participation in the 2001 documentary “Choruses of Ukraine” (D. Bohdanov, K. Delville).

At various times, Teliukh organized the ethnic Polish group Podolyany, the children’s ensemble Ladosvity, which today exists on the basis of the Khmelnytskyi School of Arts Zarichchia.

During the creative years of its activity, the team initiated festivals in the city of Khmelnytskyi:

– “Folklore Performed by Youth” together with the Association of Young Folklore Researchers (2005, 2006, 2007, 2009),

– International Folklore Festival “Ladovytsi” with the participation of groups from Poland and Georgia (2016);

– All-Ukrainian Winter Festival “Rejoice, O God, Enlighten, O Earth, the Son of God is born” (2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2019).

In addition, a series of television programs about the traditions of Podillia, “Folk Crafts,” was launched in cooperation with the Podillia Center State Broadcasting Company in 2017-2019.

In 2014, the NGO “Revival of Podillia Traditions” was registered, and we involve researchers, craftsmen, and representatives of various fields to conduct a broader study of our region, to record and document the invaluable spiritual heritage of the Naddnistrian region.

Participants of all ages who have joined the group over the years are now located in all parts of the country and the world. But what unites us all, no matter where we are, is our love for authentic traditional culture. The Ladovytsi band has raised more than one generation that knows how to represent their people and culture in their country and around the world.

We continue to research, recreate, love, be proud of, and appreciate our heritage in order to confidently manage our land, because we are Ukrainians!