Children’s Artworks after the Orange Revolution: Self Expressions of Political Instability

For this study, art works were collected from Ukrainian children in 2009 during Yuschenko's presidential term with Yanukovich in opposition. These children experienced the Orange Revolution and are experiencing its aftermath. The authors collected drawings from children in a small village near Lviv about their perceptions and feelings towards life now, five years after the Orange Revolution. Through these image-based texts, the lifeworlds of children are expressed revealing key findings. These include documentation of (1) their personal, emotional reactions to the political situation as seen through their perspective; (2) ideological concepts as makers of meanings; and (3) authentic, straightforward, and symbolic data of children as witnesses. Lastly, the authors address the volatile, ever-changing political situation in Ukraine and how this impacts on the children's visual viewpoints. It is recommended that image-based texts are important data (Eisner, 2002) for educational usage and research purposes in order to comprehend lifeworlds of children in times of turbulence.