In 2021, the IZOLYATSIA foundation, Kultur Aktiv e.V. (Dresden, Germany) and Ta(r)dino 6 Art Platform (Baku, Azerbaijan) planned a new project, Digital Summer, supported by the Culture of Solidarity Fund of the European Cultural Foundation. The project was meant to teach the participating organizations' audiences new digital skills and tools, and to build international connections, in order to rebuild social ties and communities weakened by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The project's idea was built around a summer-school format, planned to run simultaneously in three regions: East Saxony centered on Dresden (Germany), Soledar and Donetsk Oblast (Ukraine), and the Absheron Peninsula in Azerbaijan (Baku, Sumgait, Khirdalan). All three regions share a heavy-industry heritage, so the organizers chose industrial heritage as the common theme for all three sites. Participants were meant to be mostly young people aged 15–25, working with local artists, urbanists, game developers, environmentalists and media professionals, exploring their neighborhoods and turning that research into computer games, photography and video. The format combined in-person meetings in each region with a shared digital component: weekly video calls between participants from all three countries, a mid-project check-in, and final presentations for local audiences in each city.

Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and the heavy fighting for Soledar, made the Ukrainian part of the plan physically impossible. The partners did not close the project, but restructured it: instead of a joint summer school in three countries, the funds and effort were redirected to support individual cultural initiatives in Ukraine and abroad that worked with people affected by the invasion, or told Ukrainian and international audiences what was actually happening.

In this restructured format, in 2022–2023 the grant supported seven teams from different parts of Ukraine: the understructures collective with the Oberih (Talisman) book, the Pictoric community of illustrators, the Baby Theatre puppet theatre in Kyiv, the Kids Movie Fest film camp in Okhtyrka, the Open Place research initiative with a project on Soledar, the Kultura Medialna cultural center with an educational trip to Dresden and Ostrava, and a project by Maryna Samokhina. The formats vary — publishing, illustration, theatre, film education, research, cultural exchange — but the task is shared by all: to support the people and culture of Ukraine during the war and to show the world what is really happening.

As part of the same project, photographer Oleksandr Chekmenev presented Citizens of Kyiv, a series of portraits of ordinary Kyiv residents taken during Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Each portrait is accompanied by a personal story highlighting the courage, generosity and fighting spirit of ordinary people.

The series was first shown on July 5–17, 2022, in Arles, France, as part of the Rencontres d'Arles photography festival — the project was run by Kultur Aktiv in cooperation with Ta(r)dino 6 Art Platform and IZOLYATSIA, supported by the European Cultural Foundation and Germany's Federal Agency for Civic Education.

The exhibition was later shown a second time, in 2023, at De Studio in Antwerp, this time with Ta(r)dino 6 Art Platform, Malý Berlín and IZOLYATSIA.

This project is supported by the Culture of Solidarity Fund, an initiative of the European Cultural Foundation. Views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Cultural Foundation or its partners. Neither the European Cultural Foundation nor its partners can be held responsible for them.