Penza, 14 June 2016. PenzaNews. The intellectual park “Academia” is celebrating its 4-year anniversary on Tuesday, June 14.

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Over the past years, the organizers of the project are holding lectures and creative meetings with renown regional personalities, as well as discussions in traditional and brand-new formats, all at a strict, rarely-broken week-to-week schedule.

“The idea to create something that would awaken and liven up the minds of the city was generated by Penza entrepreneurs Igor Zaydman and Victor Osipov. The first rating of the Penza intellectual elite, compiled by Valentin Manuylov [editor-in-chief of ‘Ulitsa Moskovskaya’ newspaper], was published in the spring of 2012. It featured 300 names; and yet how many of them were familiar to each and every reader? 50-100? Have anyone ever heard their public speeches? It would be so nice to have a place in Penza where every citizen would be able to learn a bit more about the pride of the city’s population! They shared the idea with me, and then with a couple more dozens of the most respected and intellectual people in Penza. Together, we formed a list of several topics to start the process, and scheduled the first lecture,” Darya Trishina, one of the organizers of “Academia,” shared her memories on Facebook.

The first lecture, “Academy as Form And School of Theoretical Thinking and Conversation” [“Academia” means “Academy” in Russian] was read by Vladimir Ochkin on 14 June 2012.

“As you can see, the topic of the first lecture was symbolical and slightly helped explain the title of our community which we specifically refrained from calling a club. A club is a members-only organization. An intellectual park is open – open for ideas, for people, smart and even somewhat off-the-rails. And all that is very interesting!” Darya Trishina added.

As she pointed out, the project required resources – funding, time, space, and equipment – which is successfully procured by the founders.

“First of all, this is done thanks to Igor Zaydman and Victor Osipov. I am very happy to see them joined by other people and companies, who take the idea of an intellectual platform close to heart,” Darya Trishina wrote.

She accompanied her notes with a number of other messages, dedicated to thank certain people and companies which contributed to the creation of “Academia.”