How cultural heritage organisations reacted to the crisis

The Ukrainian cultural heritage organisations’ function during conflict

Following the outbreak of the war, cultural heritage organisations and ordinary citizens realised the need to protect and preserve their centuries-old cultural heritage. All of the country’s cultural sector has been affected by the conflict, while preoccupation has been expressed for the preservation of the historical centre of Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, that comprises various historical monuments, museums and works of art as pointed out by the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS, March 1, 2022).

Workers and volunteers of the Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum store Baroque pieces in cardboard boxes as safety preparations in the event of an attack in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, BERNAT ARMANGUÉ, AP

As cultural heritage organisations in the eastern part of the country have suspended their activities, or have been targeted and destroyed by the conflict (e.g. Mariupol’s theatre), the city of Lviv in the western part of the country has become a dynamic hub of people coming there to find shelter as well as a safe place to store and preserve tangible and intangible cultural heritage assets. A variety of cultural institutions and youth organisations have been mobilised in order to protect people and cultural heritage under threat.

In particular, the Lviv Municipal Art Centre as well as major theatres of the city of Lviv, such as the Les Kurbas Theater and the Lesia Ukrainka Theater, offer temporary shelter to internally displaced persons arriving there from across the country. Among their humanitarian assistance, these cultural institutions organise crowdfunding campaigns to gather as many resources as possible in order to be able to provide their continuous support. Other cultural institutions that host displaced persons in their spaces are the Hnat Khotkevych Palace of Culture, Lviv Puppet Theater and the City History Center.

Photo by Nazarius Shore, Inside the Lesia Ukrainka Theater

Apart from Ukrainian cultural heritage organisations’ initiatives aiming to provide urgent humanitarian assistance, the Lviv Open Lab, a youth space fostering creativity and innovation, has designed a series of activities in which internally displaced children can participate. As dictated by the necessities of the crisis, young participants of the youth lab workshops engaged in creating camouflage nets by collecting the necessary materials through crowdsourcing. This way, by utilising digital tools in tandem with open innovation approaches, cultural heritage organisations in Ukraine seek to maximise the range of initiatives to safeguard their cultural patrimony as well as to provide much-needed humanitarian aid.

All these initiatives organised in the city of Lviv are being collected and monitored by the Cultural Strategy Institute, which is a municipal institute that aims to support cultural heritage organisations of the city of Lviv.

Similarly, at the beginning of March, a variety of NGOs and public institutions, most notably the National Museum of the Revolution of Dignity (Maidan Museum) and the “Tustan” NGO, launched a volunteer expert Heritage Rescue Emergency Initiative (HERI). Its aim is to promote the preservation of cultural heritage during the war and guarantee its post-war restoration. The priority areas of HERI’s activity consist of: assisting cultural institutions and their employees; preparing for rapid response to emergencies in the context of armed conflict; protecting museum collections; assessing losses and risks; carrying out primary rescue operations; collecting and systematising information on crimes against cultural heritage; coordination of actions between various authorities at state/municipal levels, museum institutions, cultural institutions, the non-governmental sector, and international organisations on the preservation of cultural heritage and its restoration.

Workers move a baroque sacred art piece in the Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum as part of safety preparations in the event of an attack in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, Friday, March 4, 2022. BERNAT ARMANGUÉ, AP

Another area of HERI's activities is preparation for loss and risk assessment, field expeditions to liberated cities and towns with damaged cultural infrastructure, museification of objects, and collection of oral history. HERI has also conducted expeditions to the cities of Bucha, Borodyanka, Vyazivka and Kharkiv, documenting the destruction of civilian infrastructure and cultural facilities, collecting valuable artefacts and preserving them for further research and exhibitions.

In this context, some of the most common challenges cultural heritage workers face are: high-speed response to the humanitarian needs of museum staff in the occupied or surrounding territories, in areas of active warfare; the constant change on the war front and the situation in the affected locations; lack of unambiguously safe solutions for the evacuation of collection items; problematics of clear coordination of actions and agreements: museum – government authority – MCIP – law enforcement and military structures – civil protection authorities; need to coordinate with the armed forces at all levels; the need for coordination within the country and from abroad.

Click here to find more on the HERI initiative.

European cultural heritage organisations and Institutions’ response to the crisis

In light of the Ukrainian crisis, European cultural organisations and institutions have since mobilised their forces in order to support their Ukrainian colleagues to protect and preserve their cultural heritage. The Network of European Museum Organisations (NEMO) expressed its solidarity with Ukrainian cultural heritage organisations (NEMO statement, February 25, 2022) and has since then engaged in collecting and monitoring initiatives carried out by European museums for Ukraine.

In order to categorise activities in the most structured way, NEMO has divided initiatives into sub-categories under the titles: Support on the ground in Ukraine, Storage and Housing, Job offers, Donations, Education and Exhibitions and Statements.

Click here to find out more about NEMO’s solidarity initiative.

The European Creative Hubs Network has launched a separate online platform that collects initiatives organised for Ukraine in Europe and worldwide, connecting each field of the wider cultural sector. The platform was accessible until April 2022 (currently inaccessible) and anyone could register its initiative that would be later checked and published on the platform. Moreover, the European Creative Hubs Network runs the OPEN DOORS initiative with the aim to provide workspaces to Ukrainian creative professionals, while it has organised a series of talks under the theme of welcoming Ukrainian refugees.

You can check all those initiatives here.

Another digital space set up to gather activities and events addressing the needs of the Ukrainian cultural heritage sector and its people is the #CultureForUkraine initiative by Culture Action Europe (CAE) network. The #CultureForUkraine platform works in a similar way to the Creatives Unite platform, as it gives individuals the opportunity to add their initiative on the platform under a specific categorisation of events, namely Resources for Ukrainian artists and cultural workers, Residencies, General resources, Statements, Donations & Petitions.

You can find out more in the #CultureForUkraine crowd initiative here.

Cultural heritage organisations engaging citizens

Naturally, the first cultural institutions that adopted the call to offer their support to Ukrainian colleagues and people were those of the neighbour countries, especially Lithuania and Poland. In the Lithuanian case, one of the many initiatives was the one organised by the Mo museum which has since engaged in various activities, from crowdfunding, film screenings, a lecture by psychotherapist Eugenijus Laurinaitis, Ukrainian poetry readings and a collection of MO books for Ukrainian children.

The MO museum initiatives are a good example of how museums can contribute in times of crises in the most diverse and creative ways by expanding their activities and incorporating a variety of means (financial aid, cooperation with art museums abroad) and disciplines (e.g. psychology, poetry) in order to maximise their impact on the population in need of support.

Check here more on MO’s initiatives for Ukraine.

In neighbouring Poland, one of the first museums that has been mobilised to offer assistance to Ukrainians arriving in the country is the Archaeological Museum in Gdańsk. The Museum decided to transform individual support offered by its employees into long-term institutional assistance. In this context, it offers free entrance to Ukrainians, free educational activities for Ukrainian families in its exhibitions’ facilities as well as art-workshops for Ukrainian children. The Archeological Museum of Gdańsk is a living proof of how culture can be a remedy and unite people, especially in difficult times.

Click here to find more on the Archaeological Museum in Gdańsk answering to the Ukrainian crisis.

One of the most innovative ways to track and monitor Ukrainian cultural and natural heritage is the BackUp Ukraine initiative carried out by polycam in partnership with Blue Shield Danmark, UNESCO and Virtue Futures Innovation Lab. The aim of this initiative is to give Ukrainian citizens still in Ukraine the opportunity to act as archivists by scanning monuments as 3D models only through their phones. Having scanned a building, a monument or any work of art, they can then store the 3D model in an open access, online archive. This way, by taking full advantage of the opportunities that new digital technologies can offer, people become themselves actors of preservation and protection of their cultural heritage!

Back Up Ukraine initiative website

Check out more on the BackUp Ukraine initiative by clicking here.

Finally, another example of how open innovation can contribute to the preservation of cultural heritage in times of crisis is the campaign organised by UNESCO in partnership with the Global Digital Library, UNHCR, Norad, the EdTech Hub, the World Bank’s global EdTech team, H5P, Curious Learning and other partners under the title “Translate a Story Ukraine”. The Translate a Story initiative was first launched during the Covid-19 pandemic as a tool to foster remote early age reading. The Translate a Story Ukraine initiative is developed in the context of the current war setting. The overall aim of this campaign is to translate 100 early grade books into Ukrainian through crowdsourcing, namely volunteers from all around the world that only need to speak the Ukrainian language. Volunteers will also be needed to review the translations so that the quality of the books will be preserved.

The Translate a Story Ukraine campaign is a great example of how tangible and intangible cultural heritage can be preserved and handed over to the next generations, as stories, especially old ones, are a fundamental part of the cultural heritage of every community.