From 2021 onward, the team of PO “ALEC ‘South’” designed and launched more than fifteen learning initiatives within the project “Mykolaiv: a City that Learns and Teaches.” Among them were the region’s first express course “Tavrian Painting: a Triptych of Colour in Contemporary Art” (50 hours); the programme “Ceramics and Tavrian Painting: Creating Gift Compositions” (60 hours); a series of workshops “Tavrian Painting: Applying Ornaments and Compositions to Walls” (30 hours); the intensive “Foundations of Sewing Linen Shirts for Vyshyvankas with Elements of Tavrian Painting” (78 hours); the programme “Brooches in the Style of Tavrian Painting” (40 hours); the course “Foundations of Tavrian Painting for Beginners” (50 hours); and others.

At the end of 2022, PO “ALEC ‘South’” invited into partnership the NGO “Cultural and Artistic Association ‘Art-Temptation’,” headed by Honoured Worker of Culture of Ukraine Valentyna Kryvtsova. Through the strong tandem of these two organisations, the Mykolaiv Region received its own authentic embroidery based on motifs of Tavrian painting.

It all began, of course, with talks about possibilities and strategies — and with a great wish to tell and show the whole of Ukraine, and the world, how remarkable the Mykolaiv Region is.

So in 2023 training began in Mykolaiv under the programmes “The Mykolaiv Vyshyvanka Based on Motifs of Tavrian Painting” (80 hours) and “Embroidered Rushnyky Based on Motifs of Tavrian Painting” (48 hours). Accompanied by Honoured Master of Folk Art of Ukraine Valentyna Dymova, by Natalia Stepaniuk (Mazur), member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine (Mykolaiv branch) and then a lecturer at the Mykolaiv Regional Institute of Postgraduate Pedagogical Education, and by Honoured Worker of Culture of Ukraine Valentyna Kryvtsova, the embroiderers created fine vyshyvankas and rushnyky and outlined a style of their own native land.

The results of that careful work were presented at the event “On a Wave of Beauty!,” held on 1 March 2024 in the Mykolaiv Academic Drama Theatre. During the gathering, participants and guests could see what the tandem of civic organisations had achieved in sharing Tavrian painting; take inspiration from the presentation of vyshyvankas created from its motifs; see a collection of dresses and evening looks by the Mykolaiv creative duo Natalia Stepaniuk and Pavlo Vasylets; enjoy a mini-exhibition of souvenirs; and receive a printed publication about the masters.

It should be noted that important state institutions have also taken an active part in sharing Tavrian painting during the war. Among them are the Mykolaiv Regional Local History Museum, the Mykolaiv Regional Universal Scientific Library, and the Department of Education and Science of the Mykolaiv Regional State Administration, headed by its creative and determined leader Alla Velikhovska.

The work of vocational education deserves particular attention. In 2023, on the initiative of Liudmyla Komisarova, deputy director of the department and head of the office for coordinating higher and vocational education and staffing, the project “Tavrian Painting — a Wonder of the Black Sea Coast” began in the Mykolaiv Region. 

Within the project, PO “ALEC ‘South’” received a commission to train masters and teachers of vocational schools. More than fifteen members of teaching staff became bearers of the painting. They now teach young people and pass the knowledge on to colleagues not only from the Mykolaiv Region but from other parts of the country, exchanging experience and giving travelling masterclasses.

Municipal preschool education has also taken a clear stand on the importance of studying and sharing Tavrian painting. On the initiative of Iryna Romaniuk, consultant at the Centre for Professional Development of Pedagogical Workers, five groups of preschool educators and methodologists have already trained at the Adult Learning and Education Center ‘South’.  

Especially for them, within the project “Mykolaiv: a City that Learns and Teaches,” methodologist of the PO Ruslana Sikalenko and teacher Liubov Paraniuk designed the express course “Foundations of Tavrian Painting: Preschool.”

It is worth recalling that as early as 2012 preschool institutions No. 141 and No. 29 of Mykolaiv began to work with Yevhenia Bondarenko on the study of Tavrian painting by young children. Methodologists O. Borozdina and A. Yakovleva developed a number of teaching programmes and didactic games, and published the methodological collection Tavrian Painting as a Means of Artistic and Aesthetic Development and Patriotic Education of Preschool Children, now used by interested kindergartens across the region.

In 2019 the methodologists presented their work at the 11th International Exhibition “Innovation in Contemporary Education” and were awarded a bronze medal in the nomination “Development and Implementation of Innovative Teaching Tools, Projects, Programmes and Solutions in Educational Institutions.”

Business, too, sees value in sharing the painting. In recent years there have been more requests for logos in its style and for product packaging. Especially successful has been the work of leading Tavrian painting master Liubov Paraniuk and her pupil, the gifted designer Oksana Davydova, with Mykolaiv Bakery No. 1 (director: Alona Rakova). Through the close work of the bakery team and the artists, the enterprise received several new packages for festive Easter baking and more.

Local media help carry word of “Tavryka” to a wider public. Here one should mention Olena Ivashko, editor-in-chief of the newspaper Vechirnii Mykolaiv, who over the years has written more than one article about the painting and now covers every event connected with it in her paper. Great attention to the history of Tavrian painting in the Mykolaiv Region, and to its part in shaping the contemporary identity of the land, is also given by the spirited team of the television and radio company MART, headed by Vitalii Mekheda. In March 2024 they created the inspiring video The Blue-Eyed Pearl of Mykolaivshchyna within the regional project “Mykolaivshchyna: Past, Present and Future,” carried out by PO “ALEC ‘South’” with the support of the USAID project “Strengthening Public Trust (UCBI).” The same media outlet took part in filming a film of memories about Yevhenia Bondarenko.

Camera operators of TV and Radio Company “MART” Yevhenii Honcharenko and Roman Bazyk at work

In 2021 the society “Doslidnyk” carried out a mini-expedition in the village of Vasylivka, during which the participants found painted houses beneath later techniques of wall decoration. In 2022 Varvara Ahafonova and her supervisor Iryna Lakhtionova took part in the 2nd Regional Local History Conference of Student Youth “Research of Our Land,” organised by the Mykolaiv Regional Centre of National-Patriotic Education, Tourism and Local History of Student Youth. They presented their own study, “Tavrian Painting: Historical Foundations.” The work received warm responses from scholars and members of the jury and was to be shown at the All-Ukrainian Forum of Research Work among Student Youth. Then the full-scale war came…

As of the summer of 2026, Kinburn remains the only occupied territory of the Mykolaiv Region…

And yet, thanks to the priceless legacy left to us by Yevhenia Bondarenko, and to the large-scale work of a constellation of creative people committed to the cultural identity of the region, we can learn more and more about Tavrian painting — a unique folk art, and first of all a wall painting, of the people of Southern Ukraine; the bright blue-eyed calling card of today’s Mykolaiv Region and of the historical western part of ancient Tavria.

In November 2025, by Order of the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine No. 915 of 12 November 2025 “On Inclusion in the National List of Elements of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Ukraine,” Tavrian painting was added to the National List as the tradition and practice of spatial and utilitarian decoration in the Mykolaiv Region. It received the protection number 116 n.k.s. The decision was taken on the basis of the minutes of the Expert Council on Intangible Cultural Heritage under the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine dated 28 October 2025.

ICH festival “Living Culture — Living World” at the National Museum of Folk Architecture and Life of Ukraine; September 2025

Tavrian painting lives. It is developing quickly and presenting itself at events in Ukraine and beyond. Festivals, fairs, exhibitions, film shoots, masterclasses, forums… Switzerland, Romania, Georgia, the United States, Poland, the Netherlands, France, Germany, England — these are only some of the countries that already know of the remarkable “Tavryka.” It is studied in different regions of Ukraine; it is a separate nomination in all-Ukrainian and international competitions; it is researched, looked at closely, and found enchanting. For it is special. For it is woven through with values familiar to everyone: love of family, of nature, of one’s small homeland, of people and of the world; the ability to wait in spite of every hardship — and never to lose hope.