Room for Heritage

Overview

Room for Heritage is a collaborative project for local cultural practitioners in Ukraine, focused on reinterpreting cultural heritage and fostering social cohesion. The program provides mentorship and grants to help communities navigate war-related challenges and create new cultural products. The project aims to assist communities in identifying and/or reimagining local cultural resources and will provide selected participants with grant and mentorship support to create cultural products, educational programs, heritage interpretation projects, and initiatives focused on community engagement and diverse audiences, addressing the challenges of war.

Project Implementers

• Mystetskyi Arsenal
• IZOLYATSIA Foundation
• Kharkiv Literary Museum
• Odesa National Art Museum
• Dnipro Center for Contemporary Culture
• In collaboration with the Partnership for a Strong Ukraine Program

Target Audience

Up to 30 organizations working on culture and identity—local museums, libraries, cultural centers, community centers, and NGOs from regions where the Partnership for a Strong Ukraine operates: Chernihiv, Kyiv (northern de-occupied areas), Sumy, Kharkiv, Odesa, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk, Kherson, Mykolaiv, Donetsk, and Luhansk regions, including organizations displaced from these regions, regardless of their current location in Ukraine.

What We Offer

• Funding: UAH 1 million to UAH 1.5 million (funds will be provided in material or monetary form, depending on the organization's capacity and legal status)

Focus Areas

• Local identity: local narratives and their interaction with broader Ukrainian identity, decolonization processes, and the identification and development of local cultural resources.
• Culture as a factor of social cohesion: community development, new approaches to engaging dynamic audiences during wartime—participatory practices, working with vulnerable groups, addressing traumatic and controversial topics, conflict sensitivity, and trauma-informed approaches.