Saturday workshop at Pushkin House brought together Ukrainians documenting their London experience through collaborative mapping. I went because diaspora navigation fascinates me. How we create mental maps of belonging in unfamiliar cities, how geography becomes emotional rather than physical.
Met Lydia Grigorieva there. Ukrainian poet and photo-artist who works with BBC, created Between Two Worlds at British Library. The workshop ended but we stayed talking about how technology changes the way we document migration. Instagram stories versus handwritten letters. WhatsApp groups versus community centres. Different tools, different kinds of displacement.
She’d heard about my novels. Asked about Eastern European identity in London’s luxury sector with genuine curiosity rather than polite interest. Mentioned she’d like to read the manuscripts. I appreciated the directness.
The mapping project itself was interesting. Participants marked places that felt like home, places that felt hostile, places where they code-switched between languages. Literal cartography of belonging. My novels explore these themes abstractly but seeing them visualized on actual London maps was clarifying.
Lydia’s approach blends documentation with art. Not pure journalism, not pure fiction. Something in between that captures both fact and feeling. Her Between Two Worlds project at British Library archives Ukrainian displacement through photographs, letters, interviews. Preservation before memory fades into assimilation.
Left thinking about how writers like us navigate multiple contexts simultaneously. Not quite here, not quite there. The workshop gave that in-between state physical form through maps.
Posted from London, where belonging is always provisional.
— Writer Julia Zolotova
