Редакция журнала «Позитивные изменения»
Позитивные изменения. Том 3, № 2 (2023). Positive changes. Volume 3, Issue 2 (2023)
• Settlement of conflicts;
• Getting a more satisfying job;
• Starting a new creative activity.
2. They commented on actual positive changes in the quality of life.
3. There is a growing realization of unity, interconnection, and interdependence on one another within the community.
FINANCIAL SUSTAINABILITY MODEL
The theater’s financial sustainability model is built as follows:
• volunteer participation of the theater troupe;
• private charitable contributions;
• venue partnerships;
• stakeholder partnerships.
Naive? Indeed!
An Inclusive Workshop.
https://naivno.com/
The “Naive? Indeed” project is a gallery and workshop employing people with mental development disorders. They create clothes, paintings and souvenirs with original prints. The project also has a theater. The project operates as a self-sustaining commercial enterprise, not a charitable foundation.
PROBLEM ADDRESSED
Many adults with developmental disabilities are able to work but cannot enter the open labor market. It is almost impossible for them to find a place where they could study, get a profession, and earn money on their own.
Actress Nelly Uvarova created the “Naive? Indeed” project in 2010. Together with other actors from the Russian Academic Youth Theater, she performed a play at the Moscow Technological College No. 21, where people with mental disabilities are educated at the “Special Workshops” Social Adaptation and Vocational Training Center. It became clear to Nelly that as long as a person was in college, they had a cool, interesting life. But once the studies are over, the graduates have absolutely nowhere to go.
The “Naive? Indeed” project helps people with mental disabilities to get a job, find a new social circle, and feel relevant.
METHODS USED TO ADDRESS THE PROBLEM
Currently, the “Naive? Indeed” project features:
• an inclusive workshop;
• https://naivno.com/ online store;
• a special art gallery, with guided tours for visitors;
• a theater project;
• a store at Artplay Design Center, which sells the works by special artists.
The project’s main source of income is textile production, selling garments with original prints. Project partners sew clothes (T-shirts, hoodies, sweatshirts, shorts, pants, hats) for the brand collection, and the “Naive? Indeed” staff decorate them with prints. Finished products are sold at various marketplaces.
For example, the “Naive? Indeed” products are successfully competing with other manufacturers’ garments at the Wildberries online marketplace.
“We have had pretty stable sales on Wildberries lately, and it’s a great financial boost for us,” says Anastasia Lavrentieva, head of the inclusive workshop of the “Naive? Indeed” project.
In addition, the project has partnered with the Chitai-Gorod and VkusVill chain stores, and is working with corporate customers, such as Weborama and AVZ Holding. “The New Year holidays are the hottest season. Our production is overloaded in November and December. But it is a great chance for us to settle all payments and build a safety net for the next six months,” Anastasia Lavrentieva adds.
Painting is another area of activity for the project. Paintings by special artists are exhibited in the gallery and at various exhibitions and can be purchased by collectors.
In addition, the project participants work as couriers at the online store, delivering products to all parts of Moscow. “We were hesitant at first, thinking it was too hard for our folks to go to a random place and call a complete stranger. But little by little, step by step, everything worked out fine and stable,” continues Anastasia Lavrentieva, head of the inclusive workshop.
There are currently 18 special employees working for the project. Half of them come to work every day, while the other half only come to creative sessions. Those working full time are paid monthly salaries of about 25,000 rubles. Creative session participants donate their drawings to the project and can receive free specialist psychological and pedagogical support in return. The project also employs 10 non-disabled employees.
On June 26, 2021, the “Naive? Indeed” special art gallery opened. You can visit it with a guided tour to see the pictures, hear the stories behind them, and immerse yourself in the world of special people’s art.
The theater project was also launched in 2021.
“Since our project founder is an actress, we have a support group. The actors are currently starring in three productions, and two more are being rehearsed. The proceeds from the tickets are also used to support the project. This is quite a small theater, but it delivers a very special experience to the audience,” says Anastasia Lavrentieva.
The most popular performance is “The Women of Lazarus,” based on Marina Stepnova’s namesake novel. The writer herself attended the rehearsals and granted the rights to the production in support of the project. The performance is directed by Nelly Uvarova. Six actresses are engaged in the play. For them, it is an opportunity to bring their ideas to life, to improvise. During the performance, the audience is treated to tea and apple pie, which the actresses make in front of the audience.
The second performance is “The Boarding School,” based on a story by journalist Elena Kostyuchenko. Elena lived at a neuropsychiatric boarding school for two weeks and described the patients’ lives. Director Katya Polovtseva converted the article into a play. The public attention actually changed the lives of the article characters for better.
The third play is “Sugar Baby,” a fragment of a story by Olga Gromova. It is the story of a six-year-old girl who turns out to be the daughter of an “enemy of the people.” Together with her mother, she comes through her ordeals with dignity.
“I hope that our theater project will develop inclusively, too, and we will have performances with our own participants,” Anastasia Lavrentieva reckons.
In 2022, an open-air museum opened at the Artplay Design Center, with “Naive? Indeed” project included as an exhibit. The entrance group of the store was decorated with the drawings by special artist Roman Gorshenin.
“This mural on the wall of the store is one of my favorite locations for photos and selfies. It is an illustration to a poem by Daniil Kharms. Our artist Roman Gorshenin made a big series of drawings for the “Poems for Grown-Up Children” program. There are probably days we all feel like grown-up children. So Roman picked up the topic and came up with a series of wonderful images, with the help from our art director Tatiana Chemodanova. One of the illustrations became part of the city,” says Anastasia Lavrentieva.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND AWARDS
In 2014, the “Naive? Indeed” project won the social entrepreneurs’ competition organized by the “Our Future” foundation, and received a 5-year interest-free loan of 4.2 million rubles. Thanks to these funds, a textile production was opened, which applies original prints to the garments and represents the core of our project to date.
In 2015, the project won the “Theater-Goer’s Star” award in the “Best Social Project” nomination.
Paintings by special artists have been included in exhibitions at the ArtNaive Gallery (Russia’s only gallery of naive and outsider art), the Vinzavod Center for Contemporary Art, the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center, and the Ermolova Theater.
Many paintings by special artists have been purchased by private collectors, including celebrities.
SOCIAL EFFECTS
“We had a small internship program for special adults living in boarding schools. It was clear that our special employees and the people living at the boarding schools are different in terms of adapting to life. All our employees have come a long way in the project. The context of a special person’s life at a boarding school is an endless line of specialist appointments. Meanwhile, we give the project participants a friendly shoulder without making them feel being too far from the normal. This makes them truly mature,” Anastasia Lavrentieva completes.
DIRECT RESULTS FOR 2022
• the project involves 18 people with developmental disabilities;
• the product line has been expanded;
• three performances have been released;
• the partner pool has been expanded.
FINANCIAL SUSTAINABILITY MODEL
• own online store and physical store at the Artplay Design Center in Moscow;
• partnerships with retail chains;
• corporate orders;
• gallery tours;
• ticket sales for theater performances;
• private donations.
Smysloteka
The Effective Communication Solutions.
https://smysloteka.ru
The Smysloteka (“Library of Meanings”) team helps NGOs and social entrepreneurs package their ideas and messages, to make them more meaningful to the public and more attractive at the level of values, and help create communities of people who care and change social reality.
PROBLEM ADDRESSED
Smysloteka helps companies to solve their business problems through repackaging of meanings. Project specialists focus on developing effective mechanisms to overcome failures in communication, specifically:
• distortions in interpretation,
• losing the focus of attention, resulting in blind spots,
• active resistance generated by fears.
Most of the work is done as part of the Explainers program in an animated cartoon format. According to expert estimates, one minute of explanatory video is equivalent to 10–15 minutes of content in lecture format. With this tool, the company helps communicate the meaning of instructions, regulations, technologies, new products, processes, strategies, missions and values.
METHODS USED TO ADDRESS THE PROBLEM
The company’s team offers several products and services:
1) The Explainer video editor is a program that allows the user to create animations. It can be used by school teachers and students; by business coaches for creative and strategy-setting sessions; by sports coaches for game or performance debriefing; by consultants to present ideas and concepts to clients; and by companies’ in-house training centers to package content. The app is available in the App Store as a free download and includes in-app purchases.
2) Explanatory videos are created by the project’s specialists by request from NGOs, social entrepreneurs, and commercial companies.
3) “Smyslothon” (The Marathon of Meanings) is a creative intensive thinking session that the project team organizes to solve various business problems faced by the customer. The result is an information product that the company can use in the future, and several teams capable of addressing various problems.
4) The “Technology of Understanding” course is for those who want to learn how to present their ideas to different target audiences in a short, concise and clear language, to interpret meanings of messages exchanged between various specialists and business units.
5) Audit of Explainer videos – you can choose to make the videos yourself, and have Smysloteka specialists examine the resulting product and advise what contributes toward the results, and what doesn’t.
6) Trial master classes by Smysloteka, giving an opportunity to learn about practical visualization in corporate communications, create simple and impactful pictures, instructions and rules.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND AWARDS
One of the founders of Smysloteka, Sergey Gevlich, is the winner of the “Transformation” professional recognition award in the nomination “For the Development of Knowledge Visualization and Packaging Technologies” (2020).
Nominated for the WOW PRO “Level Up” award in 2021 for implementing a mentoring support system in the European Legal Service.
The “The Three Main Monsters for Children and Parents” video created for the Zhivi Foundation won the first award in the “Social Advertising” category at Lampa International Film Festival (2022).
DIRECT RESULTS FOR 2022
Together with its partners, Smysloteka has implemented more than 200 projects in various areas. The most representative ones are:
• A course on the basics of social entrepreneurship in cooperation with the Social Projects Support Fund.
• Sports Volunteering Course for the Childhood Keepers Foundation.
• A series of videos about childhood leukemia for the Zhivi Foundation.
• Videos for the “Give the Hand,” “SOS Children’s Villages” and “New Century” charity foundations.
• Oleg Kemayev, one of the Smysloteka’s founders, published a book titled “Visual Packaging of Meanings.”
SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC IMPACT
Since 2015, Smysloteka has developed about 2,000 explainer videos, investing a combined total of about 40,000 hours.
For NGOs and impact entrepreneurs, the Smysloteka team makes projects far below commercial cost. “We consider this our contribution to the problems faced by charities and social impact projects. And we would like more people to learn about these projects so that foundations can attract more resources and supporters,” says Oleg Kemayev, a founder of Smysloteka.
FINANCIAL SUSTAINABILITY MODEL
70 % revenue from large corporations, 30 % from small companies.
