Most don't perceive these spaces as their own territories. And thus they don't assume any responsibility for them and rarely contribute to changes.
This detachment is to some extent the legacy of the Soviet system which formed the perception framework stating "My address is neither a house nor a street; my address is the Soviet Union."
This is the problem that Ekaterinburg, the City of Seven Districts and the preceding project Uralmash: Production of the Future address. The goal of these two projects is to demonstrate that everyday places around us were once designed, arranged and inhabited by common people: The same ones who had their dreams and made mistakes. It is important to make the place warm, welcoming, and full of "living" stories; to evoke a sense of belonging. People who went on our district excursions or who discovered the city by other means managed to change the way they perceive the space. They turned more interested, involved, and caring. It is starting to feel like that a real change can happen and anyone can initiate or be a part of it.

A telling example is house meetings. At these gatherings, it is often impossible to agree on something and finally solve a problem. Undoubtedly, there are plenty of good cases showing that we have resources and opportunity for a change. But to achieve tangible results, we need to invoke social optimism and negotiation skills, invest in development, be persistent, and look for out-of-the-box methods and solutions. What we need is to employ proactivity, embrace our spaces (yards, neighborhoods, and towns), and realize our right and capability to change our personal space now, rather than wait for a miracle. By engaging citizens in urban research and presentation practices, by introducing them to local phenomena and communities, the museum gives them an opportunity to learn self-management, responsibility, and initiative.
The practices of People's Universities 2.0's are aimed at solving this problem. People unite in interest groups and create city-related projects based on the stories they collect. Such proactivity toward a town, a local area, and history of one's family or neighbors can transform into city activism, area development, and solidarity. The People's Universities 2.0 project helps proactive citizens show their worth. It creates a field for interaction and support and increases the number of "grassroots" initiative participants.

The events that Russia went through in the 20th century left many family ties destroyed, lost, or deliberately forgotten. Many families don't know their history before great-grandparents, or sometimes even grandparents. Such unawareness may entail critical repercussions. Most people are detached from or neutral to the history of pre-revolutionary Russia and most of the history of the 20th century, including hot-button events of the past. Knowing the history of one's family allows a person to be more conscious of the "big" historical process, understand their personal role, represent a family, and find a starting point and a point of evaluation. And rehabilitation of victims of political repressions, who were once erased from the history of the country by their state, helps us restore justice and becomes an important point of self-respect and self-determination. Immersion in history through the family context provides the sense of importance and the ability to influence the course of events. People start comparing their trajectories and contexts of life, come to understanding that their stories and "big" history are being made right now.
The museum treats family memory through a series of various programs, including The School of Anthropology and Family History and The Art of Photo Archives laboratories, Grandma's House performance, Family Album immersive performance, and TheRoot System exhibition series.

By this logic, only large-scale events matter: territorial and economic transformations, important inventions, etc. In this framework, "small" or ordinary stories, preferences, moments of happiness, achievements, failures, and disappointments of ordinary people are all secondary. They are invisible and only matter as an illustration of context. This becomes especially evident when you interview people whose personalities were formed during the Soviet era. Extremely shy, they tend to consider themselves unworthy of public presentation and find their stories ordinary and insignificant. By and large, we are still bad at telling stories. And we don't mean stories about heroes, achievements, or something unique. We mean stories about everyday life. In fact, the invisibility of such simple and ordinary stories disrupt the daily decision-making. And such consequences affect our present and future everyday life.
Personal stories help people understand that in reality, the "big" history is created by ordinary people making decisions in everyday situations. Where everything is much more complicated and controversial than described in history books. Where people recall and are proud of not what is accepted in the big narrative. Where the whole city becomes warm and alive, filled with memories, understandable, familiar and cozy, just like a street of your childhood.

Dealing with the value of personal, "ordinary" stories is the task of many projects of the Ekaterinburg History Museum. You can even say that the History Museum is morphing into the Museum of Stories. Today, we have our own Oral History Center and try to incorporate interviews and memories into plenty of projects. These include our family history projects, the main exhibition in the Water Tower, the Levels of Time exhibition, various projects in the field of the history of political repressions, and the museum's theatrical stage.