Culture Helps / Культура допомагає
Funding: European Union
Partners: zusa
Duration: April 2023 – April 2025
Project management: Olga Diatel, Yuliia Alenina, Anastasiia Yablonska, Anastasiia Dyshkant, Olha Poliak, Polina Horodyska, Sofiia Levchenkova, Artur Dernovyi, Liudmyla Markova, Anastasiia Danylchenko
Contact: culture_helps@insha-osvita.org
We have been working on the “Culture Helps / Культура допомагає” project since 2023. The initiative is designed to support cultural managers as well as independent cultural organizations and initiatives that facilitate the integration of people forced to relocate to safer regions of Ukraine or abroad due to the war.
From 2023 to 2025, the project covered a vast geography within both Ukraine and Creative Europe countries. In Ukraine, projects supported by “Culture Helps / Культура допомагає” were implemented across the Ternopil, Dnipropetrovsk, Lviv, Chernivtsi, Cherkasy, Zaporizhzhia, Volyn, Kyiv, Sumy, Khmelnytskyi, Kharkiv, Zakarpattia, Chernihiv, Poltava, Odesa, Vinnytsia, Rivne, Mykolaiv, Kirovohrad, and Ivano-Frankivsk regions.
Abroad, projects were carried out in Poland, Lithuania, France, Austria, Slovenia, Hungary, Germany, Czech Republic, Latvia, Bulgaria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ireland, Slovakia, Sweden, Greece, Romania, Spain, the Netherlands, and Estonia.
Key achievements
Over the two years of the project, in collaboration with our partners zusa, we have:
- Individual Grants: Conducted seven calls and supported 200 cultural managers (159 in Ukraine and 61 in other Creative Europe countries).
- Project Grants: Conducted four calls and supported 80 organizations (59 in Ukraine and 21 in other Creative Europe countries).
- Collaboration Grants: Conducted three calls and supported 30 partnerships, involving 40 organizations from Ukraine and 38 from other Creative Europe countries.
In total,”Culture Helps / Культура допомагає” supported 99 local projects in Ukraine and 59 international projects across Creative Europe countries.
A key component of the project was the creation of a practical handbook for culture and arts professionals: “Culture Helps: How to Take Care of Mental Health in Times of War.” This resource compiles adapted educational and facilitation materials for self-help, as well as for supporting colleagues and communities. In April 2025, the handbook was made available for free access in both Ukrainian and English.
“Culture Helps / Культура допомагає” is a project co-funded by the European Union under a special call for proposals to support Ukrainian displaced persons and the Ukrainian cultural and creative sectors.
