The Amsterdam - Maastricht University

And the winners for 2008 are:

Open-air  Sport Venue "Obstacle Course" by youth initiative group Parkour Novosibirsk" (pop vote!)

This group fond of street culture and sports will arrange a special zone for skateboarding, cycling and jumping which became an extremely popular occupation among schoolboys and students. Usually they use the streets, staircases, parapets, but that's too dangerous for beginners. This new venue is for training and coaching new followers. The project makes a contribution to a  healthy lifestyle, distracts teenagers from alcohol and drugs and combines ideas of sport, informal style and urban culture at the same time.

Video Festival "City Legends" by Lyubov Belyatskaya, Creative Union BPP

There are a lot of stories about Novosibirsk that one will never find in official books and albums: Young artists from the creative union "BPP" will produce a series of new films about our city - to add a humorous intonation into the bombastic and official style of the usual Novosibirsk films and movies.

Skotnikov's E-mailing News by the Actual Culture Bureau (pop vote!)

The Novosibirsk artist and curator Konstantin Skotnikov  will compiles this new electronic bill of upcoming city cultural events and send  it to his news list's subscribers. It is free of charge and effective for event organizers and visitors - and unique since the newsletter is devoted to non-mass culture whose managers are limited in budgets to print announcements in media and city web-portals. Now every arts manager, from a young unknown rock group to the Opera Theatre, can distribute their announcements and anyone can subscribe. The 1300 subscribers of  "Skotnikov's List" form a real community of  people with special attitude to culture and arts.  

Photo exhibition "Panorama of Novosibirsk Life. XXI beginning" by Eugeny Ivanov (pop vote!)

It sounds ridiculous but you can hardly find good documentary pictures of Novosibirsk - just glossy postcards. Eugeny Ivanov, a talented and honoured photographer, will make a series of panoramic pictures of present Novosibirsk life: from wooden huts of the XXth beginning to luxurious modern apartments, appearance of districts, streets and squares, interiors of flats and houses -genre scenes of real social life. The project is to be presented in Novosibirsk Arts Museum. 

Book of cards by Michail Moiseev

Young publishers will create and print colored didactic cards  for children with tongue-twisters,  arithmetic exercises, proverbs and distribute them free among kids and parents at parks and squares. It is important to do it not through schools and kindergartens but deliver them to families directly since the cards are aimed at parents and children reading together.

People of the Ground by Valery Klamm

"Dacha" means much more to Russians than a country-house to Europeans. It's a dramatic combination of farming, rest, country life and agriculture. During the Soviet period crowds of engineers, teachers, workers went every weekend to their dachas by trains and buses to grow vegetables  and fruits that they could not buy in shops. In the nineties the dacha became the territory of natural economy and provided survival for millions of people. In our days these narrow strips of land with small wooden cabins are still cultivated by their faithful owners - old men and women - while in the neighborhood nice cottages are built by the new generation. The author will implement a docs photography project about the disappearing generation of "dachniki" and their life on small pieces of land.  Also a field photography in the Novosibirsk suburbs during the dacha season will be produced as well as a final exhibition and film for TV distribution.

Cinema Marathon by Yulia Kosheeva, Nikita Lapov and Ilia Zaharov

The project is aimed at involving youth into the film industry. It includes the team "film-marathon" and professional assistance in making short films. At start and in the end of the marathon films will be showed for wide public.

Lilliputik by Lyudmila Nikulina (Kupino)

This group of activists will assist the school in Kupino (a small distant town of Novosibirsk region) to organize a special services and a zone where small children - primarily kids from indigent and problem families - can spend their time after lessons from lunch to evening while parents are at work. They will train teachers, buy toys, games and books.

The "Parade of Ideas" is an integral part of the "Kuhnya" project that is implemented in Novosibirsk by The Amsterdam Maastricht Summer University and the Open Siberia Agency with the support the MATRA programme of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands and the Open Society Institute.