New Partnerships and Cross-Sector Collaboration: How the Aspen Institute’s Kyiv Seminar Transformed Artist Alina Haieva’s Worldview

We all experience pivotal moments that can shift our perspectives, unveiling new horizons previously unseen and prompting us to recalibrate our existing beliefs and viewpoints. For some, such a moment might be an Aspen Institute Kyiv seminar.

Alina Haieva is an artist with a portfolio of large-scale art projects, solo exhibitions, and book illustrations. In 2024, Ms. Haieva became an alumna of the “Responsible Leadership” — 27 seminar. She shared that the seminar experience was a turning point for her — she initiated a series of partnerships with her fellow group members, from art projects with businesses to joint cultural initiatives.

Therefore, we visited Ms. Haieva’s gallery to discuss the changes in her life after gaining the Aspen experience.

The World Needs Art, and Art Needs the World

Art may exist in its universe, requiring no justification; it is self-sufficient. However, when everything around us changes, and challenges become more complex, it is an art that can create meaning, unite people, and help them see what is usually hidden. Here, the intersection of different fields becomes very helpful, enabling achieving other, more interesting results through various tools.

“I had long felt that my creative pursuits should lead to something greater. My art had always been a dialogue with myself, but the seminar became the point where I realized this dialogue needs to scale. People from various fields surrounded me — business, public administration, and social initiatives. I was used to an artistic environment, where its philosophy prevails, and suddenly I discovered another world that was so close yet somehow had passed me by,” Ms. Haieva shared.

At the seminar, the group of participants worked on staging a play. Ms. Haieva mentioned that she could see how art becomes a bridge between people from different fields.

“We, as a group, created a world in half a day. It was a metaphor for how creativity can unite. In just a few days, I created a visual representation of the play — a portrait of Antigone. Of course, it might seem very simple, just one line. But to create a portrait with one line, I had previously created 3,000 graphic paintings.”

The Aspen Institute Kyiv as a Platform for Partnerships

One of the seminar’s most visible outcomes for Ms. Haieva was new partnerships. With Yevgeniy Soloviov, they began working on rebranding the company Sea Gate LTD, using ornaments of Cossack officers. A new project combining art and business emerged with the cultural-business center Menorah in Dnipro. With the wallpaper brand “Shpelerna,” Ms. Haieva developed unique designs for wallpapers. Collaborations also began with a jewelry workshop and textile manufacturers, where traditional ornaments are embodied in modern forms.

“Interacting with seminar participants opened up numerous opportunities for me. The Aspen Institute Kyiv seminar didn’t just provide me with new acquaintances — it materialized my ideas, giving them a new scale. It was a moment when my thoughts, which lived in an abstract space, found real embodiment.”

Art as a way to unite

At the end of 2024, Alina Haieva created a New Year’s card for the Aspen Institute in Kyiv. In her work, she turned to the image of the Tree of Life — a universal archetype symbolizing tradition, heritage, and development.

“The Tree of Life symbol became, for me, a personification of the Aspen Institute Kyiv itself — resilient, but at the same time open to new branches and branches that enrich it. At the same time, I used ‘atypical’ elements for trees — roosters. This also became a symbol of uniting what, at first glance, seems incompatible.”

As Alina Haieva says, the Aspen Institute Kyiv became a space where creativity met leadership, openness, and the search for new meanings. Perhaps this is the most important thing—not just to create but to do so in the context of open dialogue that changes us and the world around us. After all, art is a personal matter of the artist and a tool for societal change.