Calvert 22 Foundation

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Calvert 22 Foundation took its name from a street in Shoreditch, East London, an address with deep roots in Eastern European immigration. The foundation was created in 2009 by Nonna Materkova, an economist born in Leningrad who had made her home in London. Her ambition was to build a bridge between Western audiences and the 29 countries she called the New East: eastern Europe, Russia, the Balkans, and Central Asia. For over a decade, that bridge held. Then came 2022, and everything changed.

  What drew Materkova to this mission? How did a converted warehouse on Calvert Avenue become a gathering point for artists, photographers, filmmakers, and thinkers from across a vast swath of the world? And what does it mean when a country labels your organisation "undesirable"? Those questions run through the whole story of Calvert 22 Foundation.

• 2. A Warehouse in Shoreditch

  ›

  Calvert 22 Gallery opened the same year the foundation was created, occupying a converted warehouse on Calvert Avenue in Shoreditch. The address mattered. The street had historically been home to immigrants from Eastern Europe, giving the gallery a resonance that went beyond branding. Spread across two floors, the space became the foundation's headquarters as well as its most visible public face.

  Over the years, the gallery staged exhibitions featuring more than 1,500 artists and photographers from the New East. Among those who showed work there were Sanja Iveković, Alexander Brodsky, and Olga Chernysheva, as well as the collective Neue Slowenische Kunst. The curators who shaped those exhibitions included Lina Dzuverović, David Thorp, David Elliot, Kate Bush, Isaac Julian, Mark Nash, Joseph Backstein, and Yara Bubnova. The gallery also contained a bookshop and a café that hosted pop-ups, supper clubs, and book launches.

  The gallery was renamed Calvert 22 Space in 2016. Two years later, in December 2018, it closed its physical doors and shifted most of its programming online. The foundation continued to hold events and exhibitions through partner institutions in the UK and internationally.

• 3. Networks and Partnerships

  ›

  From its early years, the foundation built a wide network of institutional collaborators. Cultural partners included Tate Modern, the State Hermitage Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, The Photographers' Gallery, the Science Museum, the British Council, the Barbican Centre, London Fashion Week, the London Book Festival, the London Festival of Architecture, and the London Design Festival.

  The foundation also worked closely with universities. Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, and University College London were among its academic partners, as was the Royal College of Art. In 2012, a formal partnership took shape with Smolny College, the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences at St Petersburg State University, enabling student and lecturer exchanges, visits, and conferences.

  In 2016, the foundation launched a long-term collaboration with PricewaterhouseCoopers, then known by that full name and later as PwC, to develop and publish the Creative Capital Index. The index was one expression of a broader interest in the creative economy of the New East as an engine of social and economic development.

• 4. Calvert Forum and New Ideas

  ›

  2013 brought two distinct launches. One was a think tank; the other was a publication. The Calvert Forum was set up to generate forums, talks, and reports on the role of creative enterprise in economic and social development across the New East. That same year, the foundation launched The Calvert Journal, a digital magazine covering art, film, architecture, design, fashion, and avant-garde culture from the region.

  The Calvert Journal was updated daily with reportage, commentary, and photography. Its editorial team was based in London, supported by a network of contributors based throughout the New East. The publication began with a focus on Russia before broadening its scope to cover all 29 countries in the region.

  A mobile app called the New East Travel Guide added another layer. It connected travellers to the creative and cultural life of specific cities, including Moscow, St Petersburg, Sochi, Kazan, Voronezh, and Tbilisi. In May 2016, the foundation also established the New East Photo Prize for representations of the social, cultural, and physical landscape of the region. The prize held its inaugural exhibition from November to December 2016.

• 5. Revolution and Recognition

  ›

  The photography exhibition Close and Far, held at Calvert 22 Space, was named by The Guardian as one of the ten best photography exhibitions in the world in 2014. That recognition came in the middle of a period of sustained institutional growth.

  In 2017, the foundation dedicated an entire year-long season to marking the centenary of the Russian Revolution. The season was called The Future Remains: Revisiting Revolution, and it was produced in partnership with St Petersburg's Hermitage Museum. The programming combined events, art, and digital content in a sustained attempt to examine what that centenary meant for the region and for the present.

  Financial support during this period came partly from VTB Bank, a Russian state-owned institution, which backed the foundation until 2017. Alexei Kudrin, the Chairman of the Accounts Chamber, sat on the foundation's board of trustees until 2022.

• 6. 2022 and the Shutdown

  ›

  When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Calvert 22 Foundation announced it was ceasing operations until further notice. The stated reason was the safety of its staff and colleagues, amid what the foundation described as threats to media freedom in Russia. The Calvert Journal stopped publishing at the same time.

  Later in 2022, Russia formally designated the Calvert 22 Foundation an "undesirable organisation". That classification, under Russian law, effectively criminalises participation in an organisation's activities for Russian nationals. The foundation that Nonna Materkova had built to deepen understanding between the New East and the wider world had become, in the eyes of the Russian state, something to be suppressed. The New East Photo Prize, the Calvert Forum, the Creative Capital Index, the travel app, the journal, the gallery: all of it suspended, pending a future that remains uncertain.