Unbroken Threads: Ukrainian reflections on home, community & hope

 Looking back at the co-curation of Unbroken Threads, by Natasha Liu (Outreach Officer)

Introduction

‘Unbroken Threads: Ukrainian reflections on home, community and hope’ was a ground-breaking co-curated exhibition, produced in collaboration with eight Ukrainian refugees living in north east Fife and Dundee. The exhibition, which ran from September 2025 - February 2026, showcased how small, independent museums can facilitate meaningful co-curation alongside engaging new audiences.  Through reflective essays, personal objects and stories, short film, co-curator portraits by London-based Ukrainian photographer Igor Chekachkov, and creative responses, the exhibition shared stories of war, displacement, and finding community in a new home. 

In 2023, the museum started working with Ukrainians who had recently arrived in Scotland on an oral archive project to preserve their stories. As a social history museum, the collection spotlights the lived experiences of ordinary people who lived through extraordinary moments. For example, the museum is set in a restored 17th century fisherfolk house with a rich history. During the Second World War, Polish Soldiers resided in the house and participated in local activities, and their work is now featured in the museum.  

Hosting ‘Unbroken Threads’ as the first temporary exhibition following the museum’s redevelopment project was a significant way to honour the legacy of the house, collaborate with the local community to respond to current issues, and support our contemporary collecting efforts. 

The co-curation process  

In January 2025, museum staff began working with Ukrainian co-curators – Kateryna, Vita, Tymofii, Vitalii, Viktoriia, Mariia, Julia and Bohdan – meeting monthly to encourage the group to write down their stories, discuss objects and brainstorm how to connect their different life paths within the exhibition. 

We collaborated with Edinburgh based Ukrainian curator, Viktoria Bavykina to support the co-curators write and translate their stories. These essays are available to read in English and Ukrainian in the exhibition booklets. We also worked with London based Ukrainian photographer, Igor Chekachkov, to take portraits of the co-curators. The photographs, taken from a bird's eye view within the co curator’s homes, gives a personal and textured insight into the lives of Ukrainians living in Scotland.  

Each co-curator began selecting personal objects to represent their cultural heritage, their memories of home, and their new lives in Scotland. For some, this was a challenging task, and one co-curator told us that they arrived in Scotland with only their essential items. However, we realised absence in itself can tell a story and we reflected as a group how to represent that. As such, the co-curators provided a wide array of items, from Kateryna’s novel, Julia’s PhD thesis, Vita’s vyshyvankas, Mariia’s keys, Vitalii’s documents, personal photographs, and the bags they carried on their journeys from Ukraine to Scotland. For the exhibition, Kateryna wrote a short story for the exhibition booklet and Tymofii created a short film, “Can ruins feel safe?”, comparing the ruins of the cathedral here in St Andrews with the ruins in his hometown.  

Throughout the co-curation process, threads became a recurring theme, signifying a life’s journey and representing interconnection between new and old communities. We knew that like the past St Andrews residents who welcomed Polish Soldiers into their creative communities, we too wanted to encourage a creativity within the exhibition. This led us to collaborate with Netherlands based Ukrainian embroidery artist, Olha Andrushchenko, who guided co-curators and local volunteers to produce a creative response for the exhibition. They created a collaborative embroidery, which showcased different styles of traditional Ukrainian embroidery which represented their different home regions. Olha also worked with other Netherlands based artists to create a Motanka doll and embroidered textiles for the exhibition, and we also engaged with a Dundee based net weaving group who loaned us a netting frame for the exhibition. We hoped these partnerships would showcase how the Ukrainian diaspora is forming community with one another other and with local people in their new homes, keeping traditional practices alive while also forming new traditions. 

What we learned from co-curation  

The project continues to have a lasting impact. Through the project we offered a cultural exchange workshop to museum volunteers in partnership with Bring Together, we welcomed speakers from Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain (AUGB) and the Ukrainian Consulate in Edinburgh to the exhibition reception, we hosted a visit from Ukrainians Together, and we celebrated Ukrainian Christmas traditions with Ukrainians and local people.  

We are reminded that meaningful co-curation takes time, it takes trust and it requires care. We are carrying forward our learning into new projects, thinking of heritage that responds to contemporary issues with people and collaboration at the centre.  

Thank you to Museums Galleries Scotland for supporting Unbroken Threads: Ukrainian reflections on home, community and hope via the Small Grants Fund.