Presentation of First Mobile App about Kyiv in the 1930s

22 October 2020

History and tours in your phone: on October 22, the Holodomor Museum presented the mobile app Track Holodomor History, which tells about Kyiv during the Holodomor. 

The app is already avaliable in AppStore and GooglePlay in English and Ukrainian.

The project was launched with the support of Ukrainian Cultural Foundation. 

Project curator Iryna Kurganska spoke about the uniqueness of Track Holodomor History application, “It is educational, but not boring. We collected facts, docements, people’s memories and stories of whole families, archival photos and video chronicles. Part of them we turned into comics and videos. History is not the pages of history textbook; it revives in your hands. All the information contained in the application is not available to the average person in another form — it either lies in the archives, or is scattered in various sources of information that still need to be verified. The story is much closer — in the houses where we live, in the streets we walk, and now just in our pockets — in a smartphone.”

With the app you can:

    • look through the locations of Kyiv — houses, streets, parks, buildings — and read their history of the 1930s;
    • see archival photos, videos, documents about the history of the Holodomor;
    • read the memories about life of Kyiv in 1932–1933;
    • lay your own routeacross the locations and walk along it or use prepared routes;
    • open “extra content”, which becomes avaliable only within 400 meters from the location. 

Deputy director general of the museum Yuliia Kotsur mentioned, “History should be accessible, interesting and interactive. In the Holodomor Museum, we communicate with different audiences: we have developed educational classes and workshops for children and teenagers. For those who want to learn more about the history of the genocide of Ukrainians and hear the testimonies of survivors, the museum together with Ukrainer has launched a series of videos in the project ‘Holodomor: Mosaics of history’. For those who learn information via the Internet, our site has been adapted to international standards. Now we are launching the first mobile application about the history of Kyiv during the Holodomor: this is a unique opportunity to interact with the city, learn about the history of people and buildings, rediscover the city where we live.”

Yanina Aleyeva, a leading project management specialist (“Audiovisual Art”) at the UKF, stressed that the Holodomor requires a particularly responsible approach, “Many Ukrainian families do not know and do not want to know about the Holodomor. People say that it is enough to suffer, we should talk about something good. But we need to know what happened! Therefore, f such projects are important. And more importantly, it was the Holodomor Museum that took on this responsibility and created the Track Holodomor History app.”

The head of the State Agency for Tourism Development of Ukraine Mariana Oleskiv emphasized, “Tourism is not only about entertainment and travel, it is also about learning about the history of the country. Combining tourism with information about the sad pages of Ukraine’s history is the most difficult approach. This application will help to convey information about the Holodomor simply, easily, with illustrations and interactivity! And what is important, not only for Ukrainians, but also for tourists from all over the world who will come to Ukraine! ”

Finally, the head of the expert group on museum affairs of the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine Olha Horiazhenko summed up: “I am confident that the application will become popular among people of all ages and later scale throughout Ukraine, including the story of other cities during the Holodomor.”