CRITICAL GARDENS: co-creating knowledge with Ukrainian land and kin
Yeva Kupchenko
Critical Gardens investigates the role of Ukrainian gardens as commons — shared spaces where humans and more-than-humans co-create knowledge. Historically, gardens have been sites of refuge, resilience, and power struggles. In times of crisis, whether war, ecological disruption, or political change, they serve as spaces of memory, collective care, and reimagined futures.
At the heart of this project is a commitment to epistemic justice — challenging whose knowledge is valued and how histories are remembered. Rooted in action research and critical pedagogy, the project engages Ukrainian youth in a co-designed learning process at an online democratic school from Kyiv. Instead of a rigid syllabus, the curriculum fosters collaboration, historical reflection, and creative engagement with gardens as living archives. Participants explore decolonial approaches to land and knowledge, reclaiming narratives often overlooked in dominant discourses, addressing themes of interspecies justice, cultural reclamation and eco-social agency.
Beyond Ukraine, this work contributes to global discussions on post-conflict recovery, knowldege-production, environmental justice, and resilience. The project outcomes include a co-designed eco-social curriculum and a workbook, a collection of multimedia stories featuring text, video, and audio that explore socio-ecological entanglements, and, most importantly, a community of young Ukrainian storytellers empowered to advance eco-social thinking and practices.
THIS "CRITICAL GARDENS" WORKBOOK IS A RESULT OF THE PARTICIPATORY COURSE CO-DEVELOPED WITH THE STUDENTS OF THE ONLINE DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL “MAIBUTNI” IN UKRAINE.
IT IS MEANT TO SERVE THE FACILITATORS, EDUCATORS AND PARTICIPANTS IN UKRAINE AND BEYOND TO CONDUCT COURSES, WORKSHOPS, SEMINARS WITH ECO-SOCIAL AGENCY, FROM THE LENSE OF GARDENS AS SITES OF POLITICAL, SOCIAL, CULTURAL HISTORICAL AND ECOLOGICAL TRANSFORMATIONS.
