Long time ago, Petrivska was an ordinary inhabited street, connecting Glybochytska street with Vosnesensky descent. In the beginning of 1970s, many garages were built there. But due to the serious landslides that took place here 10 years later, many buildings collapsed, and the street with the garages was buried under the heaps. After the landslides had occurred, many garage owners stopped using their boxes.
In 2010, graffiti artist Nikita remembered about this place. His father bought a garage on Petrivska in the beginning of 2000s, but had never used it. Nikita was looking for a place to open his business, and decided that an old garage was the right choice. He opened Garage Canshop – a shop selling paints. Another graffiti artist Alexander Pavlov and party organizer Sergiy Klimko soon joined Nikita`s project, and the location on the old Podil street began to evolve. 
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Friends started to clean and modernize the territory around their garage. In a short time, the graffiti shop united a small community of artists, who met at the garage every weekend for graffiti jams visited by up to 100 people. The gray garage boxes turned into bright colorful street art objects.
The graffiti shop became the central meeting point of Kyiv graffiti community. Artists from other cities also came here to buy high-quality paints, to enjoy music and parties. These people brought abandoned street to life again. Garages and surroundings are a calm and quiet place, so no one protested against artists creating their graffiti artworks here. Some garage owners even asked artists to draw some unusual and beautiful pictures on their boxes. 
In 2012, Alexander Pavlov together with artists Volodymyr Vorotnev decided to create a festival that was not focused on a particular music genre – an event for the members of all subcultures. That is how DIYstvo festival was born. The festival included craft items fair, lectures, workshops and concerts. The first DIYstvo festivals were held in Lavra gallery and in hangar on Nizhneyurkivska street, where the famous Closer club was opened afterwards. The largest DIYstvo fest took place in Podil garages in 2016. During two days, the event was visited by more than 1000 people. Meanwhile, Alexander rented a garage near Nikita`s graffiti shop and opened his own workshop of silk screen printing.
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The guys continued to modernize the territory. They removed dumpsite and a part of the greenery, installed a spaceship-looking stage, wooden benches and stairs.
Apart from DIYstvo fest, the location hosted many other events such as concerts of German and Danish bands, lectures on art and so on. 
Sergiy Klimko, organizer of electronic music parties and member of Visual Culture Center (VCRC), has been involved into organization of raves since 2012. He held parties at the hangar on Nizhneyurkivska street before the opening of Closer club at that address. After two party seasons, he was refused to rent space on Nizhneyurkivska, so he had to search for a new location. In 2014, Sergiy, rented an abandoned service station near the garages on Petrivska street. His raves, organized here, were visited by hundreds of people. Sometimes there were so many visitors so some of them had to hang out outside on the street. Besides, few modern art exhibitions organized by VCRC were held in the garages. By the way, one of the first well-known Scheme fests also took place here.
Nowadays, many music rehearsals facilities and workshops are located in the garages. Though festivals and raves have not been held here for a while, the guys are planning to organize new DIYstvo festival in the near future. The festival will be dedicated to the topic of modern self-publishing. Also, an urban festival will take place in the “garage forest” in the end of summer.
Address: 30/34, Petrivska street
Photo source: Nizhneyurkovskaya 31 and DIYstvo Facebook pages. All photos belong to their rightful owners.
Information source: bzh.life
