02 Aug 2010

Belarus Inside Out

Belarus Inside Out
The Internet community in Belarus is quite big but still resembles a village where everyone knows everyone. People, who are active in by-net, live all around the world and often meet others who live in different countries. And that makes the network of interesting, creative, motivated and a bit crazy people even bigger. Which is great! Especially when one puts such a challenging goal in front of themselves as to turn a whole country inside-out, and uncover what is hidden under the layers of mass media stereotypes.
Belarus Inside Out is the name of a cross-boarder project we were involved since the summer of 2009. This is a result of work of young people from Belarus and many other European countries with Belarus being the main subject.
BIO project is exactly the result of such a “village” effect. Some people who happened to know each other and be involved in different online youth projects decided that it would be an interesting idea to get together, form groups which would include at the same time someone from Belarus and someone outside, assign each group a topic to research and make a magazine out of their reports.
The project took place thanks to the work of GenerationBY and a European youth online magazine Plotki.org. Via the wide network of connections the project united young photographers, journalists, writers and bloggers from Greece, the UK, Germany, France, Romania, Austria and Belarus.  After a seminar in Belarus where people got to know each other a bit better and discussed the topics which would be most interesting for the research, groups were formed and they set out for a one week research trip. And after a couple of months of writing, editing, translating, formatting and general stressing out – it was ready! A 96-page magazine was published with all the materials in English and excerpts in Belarusian! On top of that soon there will be a project web-page which will present the results in an interactive form. Until then you can download a pdf. version of the magazine.
Kathrin Janka from the Editorial Board in Berlin gives you a feeling of how it tastes:
Can exile really be hereditary? Would it be a good idea to turn Miensk into a museum of Soviet architecture? What is left of the huge swamp system that once covered a third of Belarus’ territory? What is the price of a free university education? Is the Belarusian village dying or being revived by young families moving to newly founded eco villages? What situation are female pensioners facing in Belarus today? Who are the young, well educated civil and cultural activists that form the face of this post-Soviet country – which, beyond, in spite of, political restriction? Is there such a thing as Belarusian identity today?
If you want to know the answers to these questions – check the pdf. file at bio.generation.by
Below are photos from the project presentation which took place in Berlin in February. Presentation in Belarus is planned for early autumn together with launching of the project web-page which will include full texts in both languages.

The Internet community in Belarus is quite big but still resembles a village where everyone knows everyone. People, who are active in by-net, live all around the world and often meet others who live in different countries. And that makes the network of interesting, creative, motivated and a bit crazy people even bigger. Which is great! Especially when one puts such a challenging goal in front of themselves as to turn a whole country inside-out, and uncover what is hidden under the layers of mass media stereotypes.

Belarus Inside Out is the name of a cross-boarder project we were involved since the summer of 2009. This is a result of work of young people from Belarus and many other European countries with Belarus being the main subject.

Continue reading…


02 Aug 2010

Hello again!

Hello again!
It has been a while since we talked to you last time. Almost a year, actually! So now, when most people are hiding from the heat at home, there is finally time to get it all together and say “Hello!” to you again as well as give you a little update about what has been happening to us over the last year.
It might also be a good moment to finally explain who “we” are. Up until now Logbook was updated on behalf of “we” – GenerationBY team.  However, “we” is I, a 26-year old woman from Belarus who now lives in Vienna, Austria, and to prevent the confusion let’s keep it “I” from now on. Living abroad gives me an opportunity to look at what Belarus is like from the same perspective as you do – from outside. However, you can still treat what is written in this blog as insider perspective (leaving space for the unavoidable bias of personal opinions, of course) because all my posts are based on the work of a much bigger community of people who live in Belarus and have the chance to see everything with their own eyes and experience it by themselves. And as a result this team work is reflected in “we” that always pops up when the blog is being updated.
So now, when you know more about “us” ;), I can give you a short overview of our progress.
One of the news is that now you can follow GenerationBY both on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/Generationby-Belaruskae-Gen-Y/177417226986?ref=ts) and Twitter (http://twitter.com/generationby). Our profiles in both social networks are mainly updated in Belarusian, but by following them you will be able to see interesting photo reports from various events as soon as they are posted at Generation.by; and will be able to get in touch with other people who “Like” us; and your presence will motivate us to be bilingual everywhere!
I did not mention the photo-blog without a reason. We have substantially developed it as an important part of the web-page. If something youth-related is happening in the country it is most likely that you will find a thorough photo report on Generation By. Photos are also posted in a larger format now, so you can enjoy the photo-reports better.
Even though this blog was not regularly updated we never lost touch with the readers and the static blog still served its goal – help people interested in Belarus from around the world to get in touch with the young Generation of Belarusians. Some people even managed to come to Belarus during this year and see everything with their own eyes. This kind of feedback is very important to us and motivates us to take more active approach to this blog.
2009 and 2010 brought GenerationBY a lot of valuable contacts both in Belarus and abroad. Most of these contacts resulted in good friendship and some of them – in successful projects (more details to come!). We are trying to use every opportunity to get to know people like you and spread the word. This year GenerationBY is accredited to cover Sziget festival in Budapest (August 10-16); and since there is a fairly big chance that we can meet you there we will keep our eyes open not to miss you in the crowd :) But just to be on the safe side – if you want to meet – send us an email in advance!
Until then and regardless – we will be in touch!

It has been a while since we talked to you last time. Almost a year, actually! So now, when most people are hiding from the heat at home, there is finally time to get it all together and say “Hello!” to you again as well as give you a little update about what has been happening to us over the last year.

It might also be a good moment to finally explain who “we” are. Up until now Logbook was updated on behalf of “we” – GenerationBY team.  However, in case of this blog “we” is actually I, a 26-year old woman from Belarus who now lives in Vienna, Austria, and to prevent the confusion let’s keep it “I” from now on. Living abroad gives me an opportunity to look at what Belarus is like from the same perspective as you do – from outside. However, you can still treat what is written in this blog as insider perspective (leaving space for the unavoidable bias of personal opinions, of course) because all my posts are based on the work of a much bigger community of people who live in Belarus and have the chance to see everything with their own eyes and experience it by themselves. And as a result this team work is reflected in “we” that always popped up when the blog was updated.

So now, when you know more about “us” ;), I can give you a short overview of our progress. Continue reading…


09 Jan 2008

The Ship Has Been Launched

Generation.by is happy to inform you that we are launching a Blog in English. Here we are going to share with YOU about the work of our project and the community. By reading this you can regularly get updated about what interests the youth in Belarus and what is happening with young people here.

Logbook is started
The blog will be regularly updated with approximately 1-2 posts per week and will explain most important news at Generation.by during that week as well as description of most interesting discussions and events that were happening. You are welcome to comment the posts and ask for more explanation of what they say about. Continue reading…


30 Dec 2007

“Snowy Alley, 8″

Last three months of the year was an uneasy time for Hanna and Lyavon Volski, a famous artistic family, who spent this time working and organizing other people to work on a unique project called “Snowy alley, 8”. But the New Year is close and the first Belarusian new year’s show is ready. Generation.by team supported the project with our ideas, people and every day help during all these three months.

Continue reading…


20 Sep 2007

Belarusian Emoticons

On the 19th of September many Internet geeks were celebrating the Birthday of the first emoticon :-) created by Professor Scott Fallman in 1982. In Belarus this date coincides with the adoption of the new state symbols of independent Belarus in 1991 which once changed the soviet national symbols. While serious established newspapers and online resources were writing historical articles about the origin of the state symbols and young people were congratulating each other with the Day of a Smiley, generation.by team connected all in one. We presented to BY-net a new set of adopted Belarusian smileys – 15 funny emoticons with red-white-red flags which became a hit in the BY-net this autumn. Continue reading…