President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that the Thousand Spring (Tysyachavesna) project, which supports Ukrainian cultural products, will fund book publishing starting in 2027.
"I would draw attention to a category that we did not have this year, which is books. I think that it will definitely appear next year," Zelenskyy said during an event launching the selection of projects for the Thousand Spring initiative in Kyiv on Thursday.
The President emphasized the need to move faster and invest more funds in the sector.
"Therefore, when we talk about children, we are not just talking about audiovisual art; we are talking about books, and about every direction where we can support our own," he noted.
Among other things, the President added that creating content for children, particularly animation, is very important.
"We understand that children’s content needs time to become mainstream, for people to appear, animation, years. It takes years for this to happen… We need to invest more in solutions and work more on this direction," Zelenskyy added.
Applications for the Thousand Spring program closed on June 4. A total of 2,634 applications were submitted for the project. The commission accepted 1,151 applications in seven categories totaling UAH 10.8 billion, 17% of which are debut projects.
The leading categories by the number of applications are: audiovisual shows and social media content (270 applications), feature films and series (238 applications), and non-fiction (documentary) films and series (180 applications).
A technical selection process will continue until June 12, during which competition commissions from the Ministry of Culture, the State Film Agency, and the State Agency of Arts will verify that documents for all candidates are filled out correctly. Projects that meet the requirements will then move to the second stage: expert evaluation.
Lists of participants who pass the technical selection and move to the second stage will be published on the websites of Thousand Spring, the Ministry of Culture, the State Film Agency, and the State Agency of Arts.
Expert evaluation begins on June 17 and will last until July 28. During this stage, over 120 government-approved experts will conduct a comprehensive professional assessment of the submitted projects.
The distribution of applications among experts in each category will be broadcast publicly. Each project will be evaluated by five independent experts based on ten criteria, including: relevance to the program’s theme; alignment of the budget with the creative concept; team professionalism; audience engagement potential; artistic and substantive value; originality of the idea; social significance and potential impact; inclusivity and accessibility; feasibility; and the team’s experience in implementing similar projects.
Based on the evaluation results, a list of participants moving to the next stage, the pitching session, will be formed.
Final pitches in a festival format will take place from August 12 to 16. Participants will present their projects to experts and competition commissions, who will determine the program’s winners.
