Community
Founders
Master of International Space law (retired), founder of ByeByeBadBoss, Turbomasala, Holiday Orbs, entrepreneur, speaks English, Chinese and French.
A graduate of Psychological faculty of MSU, professional photographer and videographer, millinery designer and co-founder of Turbomasala, leads team-building and storytelling workshops.
Nikita Kuimov
Anastasia Klimova-Kuimova
Smena Principles
Adopted from Burning Man and described by members
Valery Mativenko, designer and marketing manager
Immediacy
We seek to overcome the barriers that stand between people and cultures. Before the start of any event, everyone can check in. It means to tell about your feelings "here and now" so that the other participants are capable to understand your state of mind and the context of your thoughts, that helps to be heard without any condemnation. In addition, it is an opportunity to share your anxiety or vice versa, tell us about your success. This format of communication at Smena is a practice of awareness that teaches to catch yourself in the moment and feel your own existence.
Mary Veselova, founder of authenticdutchbrands.com
Leave no trace
Smena respects the environment and all the participants do their best to leave no physical trace of their activities wherever they gather. "Leave nothing but footprints" you can see this statement quite often on the beaches in Sri Lanka. Especially here you feel the need to save the nature because of the shocking indifference of the locals to the beauty around. Smena people believe that it is the little things that matter and all the great start small.
Alexander Len, pre-press designer
Civic responsibility
Responsibility — one of the basic human properties as an active unit of society. No
matter how brave we are with our non-conformism ideas, we are all involved in an
interaction process with our responsibility. Smena represents a kids' camp for adults, built on the principles that everybody already knows. By the way, 99% of the laws and the rules make "common sense" that presents in us initially. So when you are here you do not need to adhere and follow the rules, you just need to be conscious, meaningful and whole human, that is very simple, because it is impossible to become part of Smena without having these qualities.
Kseniya Apresyan, designer and illustrator
Gifting
Every day the participants of Smena share something with each other. Its not only the fruits and coconut pancakes. Usually I received and gave back a lot of goods — a cup of coffee in the morning, a yoga or travel advice, business, investment and start-up consultations. People just stopped working to do me a favour. I tried to do exactly the same thing. The principle "any work should be paid" was changed to another one: "When you give expecting to get something in return, you will get exactly the same. But for some reason, when you do not expect you will get two times more".
Varvara Karaseva, 80lvl marketing and targeting manager
Participation
The participants do their best to develop Smena station and improve the projects of other participants. Once per week we run the useful masterminds. The participants tell us about their projects, get the feedbacks, the answers, the useful advice and the healthy criticism of course. In the city we often keep everything in ourselves: we are afraid of competitors, we think that somebody will steal our cool idea or widely criticize us so we want to give up. But here everything is completely different: ideas to get heard without any hesitation to be criticized so this way they are only getting better!
Alena Morozova, copywriter
Radical inclusion
"Smena means people". And they are also the main value. We are all different with various life and professional experience — look, we have got the rampant architect, and SMM-fishergirl, and conceptually tattooed young designer. What do we have in common? Wanderlust? Of course! Active life position? Sure! But if you look deeper — we appreciate the desire to live your own way. Smena gave us the opportunity to meet single-minded people. People who go with you in one direction.
Smena is people
Stories and feedback from some members of our community.
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