The project is being implemented by: Mystetskyi Arsenal, IZOLYATSIA Foundation, Kharkiv Literary Museum, and Odesa National Art Museum with the support of the Partnership Fund for a Resilient Ukraine (PFRU). 

Participants: The program is open to up to 30 organisations working on culture and identity — local museums, libraries, cultural centres, NGOs from the regions where the PFRU operates (Chernihiv, Kyiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Odesa, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipro regions; Kherson, Mykolaiv, Donetsk, Luhansk regions, including organisations displaced from these regions, regardless of their current location in Ukraine).

What is offered: The program participants will take part in a series of lectures and discussions analysing wartime challenges and practical solutions for cultural operators, develop their project ideas, and receive professional advice from lecturers and trainers. As a result of the project pitching, a team of experts from partner institutions will select up to 12 projects that will receive mentoring support and funding in the amount of UAH 150,000 to 500,000 (funds for implementation will be provided in kind or cash, depending on the capacity and legal form of the organisation).

Focus topics: Working with identity (local and state narratives of a common Ukrainian identity, reassessment and rethinking of local cultural resources, interpretation of natural and cultural heritage, decolonisation processes and memorialisation practices); culture, heritage and local development (cultural economy, engagement of creative industries); culture as a factor of social cohesion, dynamic audiences in times of war (participatory practices, engaging vulnerable groups, working with traumatic and controversial topics, conflict sensitivity and working in a trauma-informed approach); working with heritage and displaced communities of the temporarily occupied territories.

Program duration: Training will be held in a mixed format (online and offline in Kyiv) in March-April 2024; project implementation period: May-July 2024. The program will end with a final conference in Kyiv in early August.

Application deadline: March 3, 2024.

To participate in the program, please fill out the application form. 

The capacity building and networking program for local cultural operators Heritage: Space for Work is supported by the Partnership Fund for a Resilient Ukraine (PFRU), funded by the governments of Canada, Finland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United States of America and the United States of America.

Mystetskyi Arsenal is a flagship Ukrainian cultural institution that integrates various types of art — from contemporary art to literature and museums — in its activities. The Mystetskyi Arsenal's mission is to contribute to the modernisation of Ukrainian society and Ukraine's integration into the global context, based on the value potential of culture.

The Kharkiv Literary Museum is a space for social interaction and dialogue around topical issues, a place for the formation of various local communities. The museum brings together proactive cultural actors to create a creative environment. The museum was founded in 1988. The museum's collection is based on museum objects belonging to the periods of the Executed Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s, the Sixties and the Ukrainian resistance movement of the 1960s and 1980s, the early 1990s, and contemporary Ukrainian literature.

Odesa National Art Museum is a leading cultural institution in Odesa and southern Ukraine.  It was opened on 6 November 1899 with the support of the Odesa Society of Fine Arts and the Odesa City Council. The museum's collection covers Ukrainian and Eastern European art of the 16th to 21st centuries. Since 2018, under the leadership of Oleksandr Roitburd, the Odesa Art Museum has become an agent of social change in culture. The museum began actively collecting and exhibiting a collection of contemporary Ukrainian art, developing and implementing educational programs, and developing and uniting the community around it.

IZOLYATSIA is a non-profit, non-governmental platform for cultural initiatives founded in 2010 in Donetsk on the territory of a former insulation materials factory. IZOLYATSIA's mission is to stimulate systemic change in Ukrainian society through cultural projects. IZOLYATSIA is a platform for research, discussion and presentation of current social and political issues at various local and global levels. IZOLYATSIA implements projects at the intersection of contemporary art and civil society and works in the following areas: research, projects and exhibition activities, support for cultural decentralisation, capacity building of the cultural sector and residencies.