Ukraine Action Plan

Ukraine

Through the joint action plan, CER supported:

• Locally coordinated initiatives

• Smaller and/or independent heritage organisations

• The activation of its global network of cultural emergency response experts

1. Support to locally coordinated initiatives

CER supported a total of five locally coordinated initiatives: The Heritage Emergency Response Initiative (HERI), NGO Azov, Visual Culture Research Center (VCRC), Museums for Change and the Ukraine Emergency Art Fund (UEAF). Of the five, three focused primarily on memory institutions and their collections, while the other two (UEAF and VCRC) focused on supporting museums and the cultural workers who remained in Ukraine in safeguarding the country’s cultural heritage in various ways. These local coordination activities have been and remain crucial in facilitating quick, tailored damage assessment, response actions and reaching local heritage in hard to reach areas. With support of CER and the Smithsonian Cultural Rescue Initiative (SCRI), HERI has taken up a crucial position in the national coordination of cultural emergency response actions and international collaboration.

2. Support to smaller and/or independent heritage organizations

To complement the work being done on the ground by the coordination initiatives, CER focused on supporting small-scale heritage institutions and collections that fell outside the scope and network of national and/or large-scale cultural relief efforts. Thirteen institutions thereby received direct support to safeguard their collections through, among others, emergency documentation, evacuation, safe storage, and installing protective measures.

3. Activation of the cultural emergency response expert network

CER supported museum workers on the ground by connecting them to the knowledge and resources they needed to implement first aid to cultural heritage. Examples of this support include connections to online training and consultations, the coordination of three operations to transport emergency materials needed from the Netherlands to Ukraine, and the translation of the First Aid to Cultural Heritage Handbook and Toolkit.

Of the 100+ cultural institutions that were supported, 94 were museum institutions.