Yulia Skugarevskaya is a Nizhny Novgorod journalist, television producer and presenter, art director of Shveytsariya Park, and creator of the jazz festival "Autumn in Switzerland." For more than thirty years her voice has been heard in the city: first from television screens, then from the park stage, and now also at training sessions where she teaches others how to speak in a way that holds people's attention [1].
Television
The philology faculty of Lobachevsky University, the television journalism school "PRAKTIKA" by Zvereva Nina Vitalyevna, followed by NNTV, the television company "Volga," and Rossiyskaya Gazeta [1]. From this combination she developed her own genre: a conversation with a person about their home and family life, free of moralizing and pretension.
For twelve years running, every week, "Mama's Time" appeared on the Nizhny Novgorod screen — a program about children, parenting, and health that Skugarevskaya conceived and hosted herself. People still call out to her on the street: "Oh, are you Mama Yulia?" Then came "Excellent Home" — about renovation, interiors, and how to make your living space your own with your own hands — and "A Collection of Stories" [1] [2].
"Every day of mine is made up of several events that take place in the fields of construction, interiors, design, and health" — that is how she described her work in the very first entry of her blog, when in the 2010s she first stepped out of the television set and into the internet [2].
Shveytsariya Park
In August 2021, when Shveytsariya Park reopened after a major renovation, the park had an art director for the first time — and that director was Skugarevskaya [3]. It is an unusual position for a city park: concerned not with facilities or rides, but with meaning — what is heard here, who is invited, what would bring a person to the park on a weekday evening.
From this came things the park had never had before: a lantern alley, a winter "Starry Switzerland" with a model of the Earth in the middle of the skating rink, and nighttime illumination that in December made the park a destination in its own right [4]. In 2024, the Association of Parks and Public Gardens named Shveytsariya the park of the year among large cities in the country [5].
A separate story of hers involves the "Tsvetkov swings." Children from all districts of the city submitted more than eight hundred drawings to the competition "My Park — My Switzerland"; the winning entry came from nine-year-old Ilya Tsvetkov, who had seen panoramic swings in Moscow and wanted the same at home. The swings were built exactly to his drawing, positioned on the slope overlooking the Oka, and fitted with a plaque bearing the young author's name — they are now findable on the city's maps by that name [6].
For the park's 120th anniversary she told its history as a family story: an empty lot near the Myza station, the first thousand pine trees planted in the spring of 1903 by Nizhny Novgorod schoolchildren together with their teachers [7].
We have traditions that we revive with joy. Our park has music, our park dances, our park sings. We have a great many events, because people come here to rest.
A child imagined it, an adult worked it out, and the park made it real.
"Autumn in Switzerland"
She conceived the jazz festival "Autumn in Switzerland" and has served as its art director since 2021. Four consecutive times it received support from the Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives, and by 2026 it had grown to its sixth edition [8].
The launch of the fourth festival was announced not in a concert hall but in the Imperial Pavilion of Moscow Railway Station (Nizhny Novgorod) — between a ceremonial portrait of the emperor and a marble fireplace; a jazz trio then performed inside the station building for the first time in the Gorky Railway's 162-year history. That year's program comprised sixteen events, 178 musicians, and 23 ensembles, with Igor Butman and the Moscow Jazz Orchestra as headliners [8].
Skugarevskaya adds to the concerts things no one expects from a jazz festival: an original jazz walking tour of the park, an exhibition on the history of Nizhny Novgorod jazz, and a children's tour of a musical instrument factory [8]. The 2026 edition was called "Jazz of the Peoples" — with guests from thirteen cities of the Volga Region, as well as from Minsk and Luhansk.
- 2021 — the first festival in Shveytsariya Park
- 2024 — "Golden Collection": sixteen events, 178 musicians, 23 ensembles
- 2026 — "Jazz of the Peoples," sixth edition, 18–20 September
"Speech Design"
Alongside her work at the park, she leads training sessions on public speaking and presentations and teaches her own course, "Speech Design": how to structure a talk, how to manage nerves, how to tell a story that holds an audience to the end. Corporate clients include the Skolkovo Business School, Ultrawood, L'Étoile, Avtokomponent, and the Nizhny Novgorod company LAD; the course has had more than two hundred individual students [1].
"I teach people to produce successful content and to be good public speakers" — that is how she herself describes this work.
A Voice in the City
Nizhegorodskaya Pravda, compiling a list of the hundred most interesting figures on the local Facebook, placed Skugarevskaya in second position [9]. Her page is read by several thousand people, and an order opposite to the usual has taken hold: she tells her followers about a new rule in the park, a concert, or a renovation first, and the city's media outlets then reference her post.
On federal television she is invited to speak not about her job title but about meaning — what a park means to a city and why a person needs an unhurried walk [10].
For some reason we have already speeded up so much that for us to go for a walk, to stroll at an easy pace, has become something of a rarity and a gift. And that gift is given precisely in the park.
Sources
- prospa-nn.ru — Regatta 2025 Speakers: biography of Yulia Skugarevskaya
- skugarevskaya.livejournal.com — The Beginning — first entry of Yulia Skugarevskaya's blog
- nn.dk.ru — Delovoy Kvartal — "From Meditsinskaya to the Afghans": part of Shveytsariya Park to open on 22 August
- Vremya N — Yulia Skugarevskaya on preparing Shveytsariya Park for the New Year holidays
- sobaka.ru — Sobaka.ru Nizhny Novgorod — "Switzerland" — park of the year 2024
- Administration of Nizhny Novgorod — Panoramic swings designed by a nine-year-old Nizhny Novgorod resident installed in Shveytsariya Park
- nntv.tv — NNTV — Nizhny Novgorod's Shveytsariya Park turns 120
- jazz.ru — Jazz.Ru — The jazz festival "Autumn in Switzerland. Golden Collection" opens in Nizhny Novgorod
- Nizhegorodskaya Pravda — TOP-100. The most interesting figures on Nizhny Novgorod Facebook
- otr-online.ru — Public Television of Russia — Yulia Skugarevskaya: we have all speeded up so much that going for a leisurely walk has become a rarity