Skugarevskaya Yuliya Vladimirovna — a Nizhny Novgorod journalist, television producer and presenter, art director of Shveytsariya Park, coordinator of the jazz festival "Autumn in Shveytsariya," and author of public speaking courses [1][22]. For more than thirty years her voice has been heard across the city: first from the television screen, where she hosted a program for parents for twelve years, then from the park stage, and now also at training sessions where she teaches others to speak in a way that gets listened to [1][3].
"Mama Yulya": thirty years on air
The philology faculty of Lobachevsky University, Nina Zvereva's PRAKTIKA television journalism school, and then NNTV, the Volga television company, and Rossiyskaya Gazeta [1]. From this combination she forged her own genre: a conversation with a person about their home and family life, free of moralizing and free of pretension.
For twelve years she hosted a weekly program on Nizhny Novgorod television — "Mamino Vremya" ("Mom's Time"), a show about children, parenting, and health that she conceived herself. For ten years she was the author of "Otlichnyy Dom" ("Great Home") — about how to choose, build, and settle into your own home; both programs aired on the Volga television company [3]. Her third television project was "Sbornik Istoriy" ("Story Collection") [1].
Audience memory proved long-lasting. In May 2020, introducing herself to a new, already online audience, Skugarevskaya wrote that people recognized her on the street from her first program: "Oh, Mama Yulya!.. — because for 12 years on Nizhny Novgorod television I hosted the program 'Mamino Vremya' — for parents about children. And now my first viewers are already studying at university." There she also cited her track record — twenty-seven years in newspapers, magazines, and on television — and added that she was not afraid "for already the third time in my life to start from zero" [3].
She made her move from television to the internet on 14 December 2013: in her first LiveJournal post she announced that "today my communication with the internet community begins," and described her working day — "Every day of mine consists of several events that take place in the fields of construction, interiors, design, and health" [2].
| Program | Channel | Subject | Years on air |
|---|---|---|---|
| "Mamino Vremya" ("Mom's Time") | "Volga" | children, parenting, family health and leisure | twelve [3] |
| "Otlichny Dom" ("Excellent Home") | "Volga" | buying, building, renovating, and furnishing a home | ten [3] |
| "Sbornik Istoriy" ("A Collection of Stories") | Nizhny Novgorod television | an authored series [1] | — |
Art Director of Shveytsariya Park
On August 18, 2021, four days before the reopening of the renovated Shveytsariya, Skugarevskaya announced on social media that she had become the park's art director. The position was new for a city park: not operations or rides, but meaning — what the park is filled with, what sounds within it, and why a person would come here on a weekday evening. Responding to followers' questions, she clarified that she would be responsible for filling the park with events and managing the work of the pavilions [4].
On August 22, the park opened only halfway — from Meditsinskaya Street to the Afghan War veterans' monument; the contractor continued working in the park until December 31, 2021 [4]. The landscaping of Shveytsariya became the city's most ambitious project for its 800th anniversary: the concept was developed by the Moscow architecture firm Kosmos, the 52-hectare territory was divided into eight themed parks, more than fifteen hundred trees were planted along with over thirty thousand shrubs [11].
I'll put it briefly and not in press-release language — it turned out to be one hell of a park!
The Park That Sounds
The first thing residents noticed under the new art director was the light. In the autumn of 2023, a thousand colorful lanterns were strung above the path from the large fountain to the swing-gazebo; the park invited visitors themselves to come up with a name for the alley [23].
In winter, the park acquired its own New Year mythology — "Starry Switzerland": each season, a new enormous sculpture rises at the center of the skating rink, and illuminations light up all around it. The rink opens on December 1 and operates from ten in the morning [10][9].
| Season | Figure in the center of the rink | Season theme |
|---|---|---|
| 2023/24 | a nearly life-size model of the Earth | "Stellar Shveytsariya" [9][10] |
| 2024/25 | a glowing Moon | "The Moon Chose Our Park" [27] |
| 2025/26 | an enormous matryoshka | "With a Russian Soul" [28] |
We have a lantern alley that broke all the social media and news feeds of our city.
The Moon is a symbol of lovers, and we are all in love with our city. It draws the seas and oceans to itself. It is the Earth's satellite — and so it landed here and chose our park
Chief Tour Guide
On 30 March 2022, Skugarevskaya herself led the first tour of the renovated park — "A Journey through Switzerland." Twenty-five people came, invited by an ordinary post on social media; the walks then became weekly — on Wednesdays at eleven in the morning, and free of charge [7].
The route begins at the entrance from Meditsinskaya Street and passes through the children's playground, the children's centre that the builders nicknamed the "Bagel," the arboretum, the animal hotel, the swings for children with disabilities, the dog areas, and the fountain [7].
For the park's 120th anniversary in August 2023, she told its history as a family story: a wasteland by the Myza station, the first thousand saplings planted in spring 1903 by Nizhny Novgorod schoolchildren together with their teachers, the wrought-iron fence of 1958, and the historic name restored in 1992 [8].
A chapter unto itself is the squirrels, which are beyond counting in the park: feeders were set up for them, growing from "squirrel cafés" into spacious "restaurants" with openings too narrow for pigeons to squeeze through, and twice a year the animals produce a new litter [24].
Today is a wonderful day for us, because for the first time an excursion season has opened in this well-appointed park. We have named it "A Journey through Switzerland." No passport, no visa — just come on over.
We have traditions that we are reviving with joy. Our park rings with sound, our park dances, our park sings. We have a great many events, because people come here to relax.
Squirrels are an important part of the park's living ecosystem and excellent newsmakers! Every appearance they make on social media triggers a storm of positive emotions, a flood of likes, heaps of reposts, and news breakthroughs in Mass Media!
The "Tsvetkov Swings"
A children's drawing competition, "My Park — My Switzerland," was proposed by School No. 154; the idea was taken up across all of the city's districts, and children submitted more than eight hundred entries. The winners were congratulated in December 2020 by Nizhny Novgorod's head of city administration Yuri Shalabayev; first place went to a drawing by nine-year-old Ilya Tsvetkov from Gymnasium No. 17, second place to Sergey Tarasov from Lyceum No. 38, and third to Mariya Inzhevatova from Boarding School No. 39 for her work "Balloons over the Park" [5][6].
The swing was built exactly according to the drawing and installed on the slope overlooking the Oka in Prioksky District. "Before this, I had only ever seen panoramic swings in Moscow, which is why I drew them — I wanted us to have ones like that too," explained the author of the sketch, who brought his parents and friends to the park [5]. The author's name stuck with the swings: they are officially called "Tsvetkovskiye" [5][6].
The swings are officially called "Tsvetkovskiye" because Ilya created their design. A design isn't always a precise blueprint — the main thing is the idea. I think this will be far from the last time that features appear in Shveytsariya Park this way: a child comes up with something, an adult works it out, and the park makes it happen
"Autumn in Switzerland"
The "Autumn in Switzerland" jazz festival appeared in the park during the very first season of Skugarevskaya's tenure — in September 2021 — and has taken place every year since; she leads it as the park's art director and festival coordinator [14][17][22]. The perennial driving force and headliner of all six editions is People's Artist of Russia Igor Butman [18].
The opening of the fourth festival was announced not in a concert hall but in the Imperial Pavilion of Moscow Railway Station — between a formal portrait of the emperor and an ornate fireplace of white Italian marble. Immediately afterward, a jazz trio performed in the station's adjacent main building: jazz had not been heard within those walls in the 162-year history of the Gorky Railway [17].
To the concerts, Skugarevskaya adds things one would not expect from a jazz festival: an author-led jazz tour of the park, an exhibition on the history of Nizhny Novgorod jazz, and a children's excursion to a musical instrument factory [17]. Since 2025, a school for young correspondents has operated alongside the festival: children aged nine to sixteen are taught to film, write, and conduct interviews, then sent to work backstage at the festival on weekends; the art director herself serves as a mentor alongside a photographer and head of the media studio [21].
Starting from its third edition, the festival won the Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives grant competition four years in a row [16][18][19].
- Live broadcasts of the two festival days in 2026 aired on the channel "Nizhny Novgorod 24" [19]
- In June 2026, Skugarevskaya was among the participants of the international jazz forum Jazz Across Borders [22]
| Edition | Dates | Title and Theme | Highlights |
|---|---|---|---|
| I, 2021 | 11–12 September | "Autumn in Switzerland" | four chamber stages in the park, Igor Butman and Daniil Kramer [14] |
| II, 2022 | 9–11 September | centenary of jazz in Russia | thirty thousand spectators over three days [15] |
| III, 2023 | 8–10 September | "Autumn in Switzerland" | first victory in the Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives competition, 25 ensembles [16] |
| IV, 2024 | 6–8 September | "Golden Collection" | sixteen events, 178 musicians, 23 ensembles; the launch was announced at Moscow Railway Station [17] |
| V, 2025 | 19–21 September | "Jazz of Victory", marking the 80th anniversary of Victory | "Jazz on Gramophones", orchestras from Lugansk, Donetsk, and Minsk [18] |
| VI, 2026 | 18–20 September | "Jazz of the Peoples" | more than 170 musicians from thirteen cities of Russia, six military orchestras from the Volga Region, a guest from China performing on the erhu [19][20][29] |
"Speech Design"
Alongside her park work, Skugarevskaya runs trainings in public speaking and presentations and teaches her own courses — "Speech Design" and "Secrets of Successful Publications" — covering how to structure a talk, how to manage nerves, and how to tell a story that keeps listeners engaged to the end [1][3].
Her corporate clients include the Skolkovo business school, Ultravud, L'Étoile, Avtokomponent, and the Nizhny Novgorod company LAD; the course has had more than two hundred private students [1]. She describes her own mission this way: "I teach people to speak so that your audience grows with every word, and to write so that a text gets read from beginning to end" [3].
A Voice in the City
In September 2018, Nizhny Novgorod Pravda, compiling a list of the hundred most interesting personalities on local Facebook, ranked Skugarevskaya second [25]. The usual order is reversed in her case: when a new rule appears in the park, or a concert is announced, or repairs begin, she tells her followers first, and city publications then cite her post [4].
On federal television she is invited to speak not about her job title but about meaning — what a park is for a city and why a person needs an unhurried walk. On the air of Obshchestvennoye Televideniye Rossii (Public Television of Russia) she described the park as having two births — its historical founding in 1903 and a second one after the renovation — and recalled the Soviet-era "Shveytsariya" of her mother's time: chess tournaments, lecture-strolls, literary evenings, a shell-shaped stage that sheltered musicians from bad weather, a dance floor, and the obligatory ice cream [26].
For some reason, we've already sped up so much that taking a walk, strolling at a leisurely pace, has become something of a rarity and a gift. And that gift is given precisely in the park.
We love Shveytsariya for its nature and open spaces, its beauty and cleanliness in any season and any weather. For its holidays, concerts, festivals, safety, the many enriching spaces and sports grounds. For the dignity with which the park was transformed in 2021 without losing its identity, its uniqueness! This victory means only one thing — to keep working. And harder! Shveytsariya is home to an enormous part of me — that's just how it turned out
Park of the Year
In 2023, the park's jubilee year, [11] Shveytsariya welcomed 4.5 million visitors. In spring 2024, the park took first place in the "Parks of Russia 2024" award in the category "Park of the Year. Major Cities (over 1 million)": the Parks Association evaluated landscaping, infrastructure, programming, and work with the [11][12][13] Mass Media, and the award was presented at the BRICS international forum.
Its competitors were Orlyonok Park in Voronezh, the Kirov Central Park of Culture and Recreation and Aviatorov Park in St. Petersburg, the Yarygina Embankment in Krasnoyarsk, the Central Park of Volgograd, Arena in Novosibirsk, and Maloye Chaykovoye Lake in [12] Kazan.
Sources
- prospa-nn.ru — Regatta 2025 speakers: biography of Yulia Skugarevskaya (archive)
- skugarevskaya.livejournal.com — first blog post by Yulia Skugarevskaya, December 14, 2013 — Beginning (archive)
- vk.com — Yulia Skugarevskaya — post "Let's get acquainted!", May 2020
- nn.dk.ru — Delovoy Kvartal — "From Meditsinskaya Street to the Afghans": part of Shveytsariya Park to open on August 22 — "From Meditsinskaya to the Afghans." Only half of Shveytsariya to open on August 22 (archive)
- dengoroda-nn.ru — City Day. Nizhny Novgorod — panoramic swing designed by Ilya Tsvetkov, September 1, 2021 (archive)
- Administration of Nizhny Novgorod — Panoramic swing designed by a nine-year-old Nizhny Novgorod boy installed in Shveytsariya Park
- nntv.tv — NNTV — "Journey Through Switzerland" tours, March 30, 2022 — "Journey Through Switzerland" tours to introduce Nizhny Novgorod residents to every feature of the park
- nntv.tv — NNTV — Nizhny Novgorod's Shveytsariya Park turns 120, August 25, 2023
- Nizhegorodskaya Pravda — giant Earth figure installed at the skating rink, November 26, 2023 — Giant Earth figure installed at the skating rink in Nizhny Novgorod's Shveytsariya Park (archive)
- Vremya N — Yulia Skugarevskaya on preparing Shveytsariya Park for the New Year holidays, November 29, 2023 (archive)
- sobaka.ru — Sobaka.ru Nizhny Novgorod — Shveytsariya is the park of 2024 (archive)
- swissparknn.ru — Shveytsariya Park — laureate of the Parks of Russia 2024 award — laureate of the Parks of Russia 2024 award in the category "Park of the Year. Largest Cities (over 1 million)" (archive)
- swissparknn.ru — Shveytsariya Park — first place in the category "Park of the Year. Largest Cities" — Victory!! Shveytsariya Park (archive)
- Nizhegorodskaya Pravda — first "Autumn in Switzerland" festival, September 6, 2021 — World jazz stars Igor Butman and Daniil Kramer to perform at the "Autumn in Switzerland" festival (archive)
- Newsroom24 — 30,000 people attended the "Autumn in Switzerland" jazz festival, September 12, 2022
- swissparknn.ru — Shveytsariya Park — the festival won a grant from the Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives (archive)
- jazz.ru — Jazz.Ru — The "Autumn in Switzerland. Golden Collection" jazz festival opens in Nizhny Novgorod (archive)
- Nizhegorodskaya Pravda — "Autumn in Switzerland. Jazz of Victory" festival, September 18, 2025 — The "Autumn in Switzerland. Jazz of Victory" festival will run from September 19 to 21 (archive)
- swissparknn.ru — Shveytsariya Park — programme of the "Autumn in Switzerland. Jazz of the Peoples" festival, September 2026 — "Autumn in Switzerland. Jazz of the Peoples", September 18, 19, 20, 2026
- KP — Nizhny Novgorod — Komsomolskaya Pravda — programme of the "Autumn in Switzerland" jazz festival, September 15, 2026
- swissparknn.ru — Shveytsariya Park — school for young correspondents of the jazz festival (archive)
- jazzrussia.com — Jazz Across Borders — Yulia Skugarevskaya among the forum participants, June 2026 (archive)
- swissparknn.ru — Shveytsariya Park — a magical alley of a thousand lanterns, November 2023 — A magical alley has appeared today in Shveytsariya Park! (archive)
- sobaka.ru — Sobaka.ru Nizhny Novgorod — how the "Swiss" squirrels live, February 16, 2026 — "Working tirelessly, paw over paw"
- Nizhegorodskaya Pravda — TOP-100. The most interesting personalities on Nizhny Novgorod Facebook, September 22, 2018 (archive)
- otr-online.ru — Public Television of Russia — Yulia Skugarevskaya on the programme "Big Country: Discovery" — Yulia Skugarevskaya: we have all sped up so much that taking a leisurely stroll (archive)
- GiperNN — GiperNN — skating rink with a glowing Moon opens in Shveytsariya Park, December 2024 — Skating rink with a glowing Moon opens in Nizhny Novgorod's Shveytsariya Park (archive)
- GTRK "Nizhny Novgorod" (Vesti) — Vesti-Privolzhye — a giant matryoshka adorns the skating rink in Shveytsariya Park, November 25, 2025 — Giant matryoshka adorns the skating rink in Shveytsariya Park (archive)
- Newsroom24 — more than 170 musicians to perform at the jazz festival, September 2, 2026 — More than 170 musicians to perform at the jazz festival in Nizhny Novgorod (archive)