Wasted Talent, a magazine about contemporary culture, action sports and subcultures, presented its 14th print issue — one of the articles in the issue is dedicated to the Behind Blue Eyes project, which works with children from de-occupied and frontline cities of Ukraine. The magazine told the story of the project — from its foundation with the aim of humanitarian aid to children and their families to its evolution into a project to support and develop children’s creativity based on their wartime experience. We talked to the Behind Blue Eyes team and tell you more about their collaboration with Wasted Talent
About starting work on the interview
According to Artem Skorokhodko, co-founder of the project, the manifestation in the magazine was their initiative because they have long followed Wasted Talent as one of the top Western media about action sports, art and subcultures.
‘In early 2024, one of the issues of Wasted Talent featured an interview with Ukrainian artist Masha Reva, and her work was placed on the cover of the print version of the magazine. At the same time, we raised funds for the treatment of Kira, a 15-year-old girl from the village of Snihurivka, Mykolaiv region, who suffered from russian shelling in early January. You may ask, how are these stories connected? Masha Reva supported our fundraiser and raffled off several issues of the magazine for a donation. Wasted Talent also made a contribution when they tagged the project page in their social networks. After that we had a chat, so I decided to try my luck and asked if they would be interested in featuring Behind Blue Eyes in their magazine — and it worked’.
Communication about the interview for the print issue began in January 2024, but work was delayed.
‘Sometimes we joked that this interview wouldn’t happen. In general, you need to understand the vibe of this magazine — their team lives in a completely different mode, they have a measured and awesome life. But, fortunately, everything turned out very cool, — Skorokhodko says. — Another interesting detail is that at the start of communication we relied on the team’s links with action sports and counterculture. Taking into account the content of the magazine, it seemed to us that they would be more interested in it than in a charity project. But the opposite happened — they were very interested in Behind Blue Eyes and our background didn’t matter’.
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About the main accents of the interview
Talking about what aspects of their work they decided to highlight in the interview, Artem explained that ‘they wanted to tell the community about a project that is close to them in terms of vibe, and show them photos created by children from the frontline and de-occupied territories’.
‘For us, any manifestation in the media is an opportunity to show the children’s creativity and their outlook on life. Their photos are a peculiar format of war documentary photography, hence another way to draw the world’s attention to the war in Ukraine. We are especially pleased that the editor of the magazine offered us to place a QR code in the article, which will open our website, so that the readers of Wasted Talent could support the project’. Skorokhodko added that the editor of Wasted Talent Josh Barrow, who worked on the article, ‘was absolutely delighted with the children’s photos’, that’s why all the photos shared by the Behind Blue Eyes team were placed on the pages of the magazine.
‘He was interested in everything about Behind Blue Eyes: from the story of how the idea and the name came about, to stories about how we prepare for expeditions, pack boxes, where we develop the film, etc. That is, the interview really focuses on organizational and operational moments. However, the first part of the article is fully devoted to the history of the project, its main mission and results’.
What is written about Behind Blue Eyes in Wasted Talent magazine
We first heard about this wonderful charity based out of Ukraine, courtesy of our Volume XIII cover artist, Masha Reva. She had auctioned off a box of the magazines in her Kyiv studio with all proceeds heading straight to Behind Blue Eyes. When we dug a little deeper their concept really grabbed our attention. The goal initially, like most charities, was to raise money and support where aid was needed, but the bit that really got us was the amazing work they started doing with children off the back of that. During such difficult and confusing times, they are giving kids a chance to be creative, all whilst supporting them and their families. We had the pleasure of catching up with Co-Founder Artem Skorokhodko and Oksana Ridkous (Head of PR) who provided a deeper insight into it all.
Behind Blue Eyes also became a response to the following challenges and conditions:
— When the entire world is stressed about how kids go through the horrors of war, no one seems to ask the kids about their own perceptions and reflections.
— When Ukrainian families generally perceive creativity as an optional occupation; it is an occupation in which one won’t be able to make a living. Priority is given to traditional professions, hard skills, and labour work, especially in rural areas.
— When the war in Ukraine is trending downward on the world news agenda, new communication methods are needed.
— When the war has no right to prevent kids from dreaming and looking into the future.
Behind Blue Eyes exists to support children’s ability to dream despite the traumatic war experience and show that creativity can be a powerful tool to make those dreams come true.
The Behind Blue Eyes project was founded in 2022, after the outbreak of a full-scale war. The idea for the project came to Dmytro Zubkov and Artem Skorokhodko during volunteer trips to three de-occupied villages in Chernihiv region: Yahidne, Sloboda, and Lukashivka. For several months, they provided food and basic necessities to the local residents — among them were many children, ‘who became volunteers’ friends and exuded that shine that they wanted to capture in difficult times’.
During one of their trips, Dima and Artem handed out disposable film cameras to all willing children and asked them to photograph whatever they wanted during the week. The main condition was that there were no set rules or wishes for the photos.
The goal of the project was not only to document the effects of war and the world around children, but also to realize children’s dreams and wishes. The organizers asked local children to write their own personal wishlists to ‘show them that creativity can be a powerful tool to realize their own dreams’ that ‘should not be taken away by war’.
Later the team visited de-occupied villages of Zaporizhzhia region, went on expedition to liberated Kherson, Kharkiv and Sumy regions and frontline Mykolaiv region.
During the period of its activity Behind Blue Eyes visited more than 1400 children from 19 villages and realized more than 200 children’s wishes from their wishlists. The children took more than 3,500 photos for the team using film cameras, which form the basis of the Behind Blue Eyes photo archive
