WINNERS 2020

It is a sad fact that Ukrainian society is mostly xenophobic. It gets even worse when it comes to homophobia. The emotional distance between ”Me” and “Them”makes it difficult to match one’s own emotional issues with “these people”’s issues. Although, the life of LGBT people is an everyday struggle against stereotypes and fear, there are very few people, who can understand and relate to that. So how do we spark an empathy towards LGBT and increase acceptance in a mostly homophobic society? We needed to go deeper, to the very common basics of acceptance. We found out that the most emotionally challenging experience for LGBT people in coming out is opening up to family: their reaction is usually negative and most hurting, unlike the reaction of friends/colleagues. Because besides a personal hardship of coming out for LGBT people, it can be even harder for your parents to cope with the new perception of you. This universal truth makes homophobic parents who accepted their LGBT kids the true heroes. We wanted all Ukrainians to know about these parents. That is how an idea for Museum of Acceptance was born. The Museum of Acceptance is an interactive storytelling experience of parents discovering the true lives of their children. Going through their stories the visitor finds the most popular stereotypes about LGBT and breaks them. What is more, the Museum fully engages you to relive the moments of shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance. In the climax of a story you get to the 360 video where you are put right in the middle of a conversation between mother and her LGBT child in the moment she accepts her child for what he is. The story ends with a call-to-action for the visitor to click on “#яприймаютебе” (#iacceptyou) hashtag and to share the words of acceptance on Facebook.