Restoring Ukraine’s Cultural Heritage

Cultural Heritage without Borders (CHwB) in Sweden, Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Kosovo, and the Maidan Museum in Kyiv, have implemented the project “Restoring Ukraine’s Cultural Heritage in Partnership” during 2023-2024.

Thanks to support of seed-money from the Swedish Institute (SI), the collaboration started in 2023 between the CHwB network and the Maidan Museum, with the focus to prepare for capacity building of heritage professionals in Ukraine. The intention now is to continue during 2024-2025 and a new application for project support has been submitted to SI, with the theme “Capacity Building to Safeguard and Promote Ukrainian Heritage.”

In 2023 the goal was to develop a platform/strategy for possible forms of cooperation and priorities for future efforts to support, protect and restore Ukraine’s cultural heritage. Two physical meetings and a number of digital meetings has been held, and at the first physical meeting also representatives of Cultural Emergency Response could participate via internet link. The meeting also included hosting a seminar during the Swedish Museums’ Spring Meeting 2023. A second meeting in the form of a workshop was held in Tirana in October 2023.

Seminar during the Museums Spring Meeting 2023 with participants from CHwB Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Sweden

The continued activities in 2024/25 implies that a number of Ukrainian heritage professionals will be offered the opportunity to participate in Regional Restoration Camps that have been organized through CHwB Albania since 2007. The aim is to share experiences, and the model and methods that CHwB developed to rebuild cultural heritage that was destroyed during the Balkan wars, and where cultural heritage is a resource for reconciliation and sustainable development. CHwB also sees it as an opportunity that our methods can be developed in a new context – in Ukraine.

Another priority in 2024/25 is to increase and strengthen the capacity of a number of people who can document and systematize war crimes in Ukraine (following the Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict – ‘The Hague Convention’ of 1954).

Workshop in Örebro in spring 2023 with participants from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Sweden. On link participants from Maidan Museum Kyiv and Cultural Emergency Response
Workshop in Sweden 2023 with participants from CHwB Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Sweden

On several occasions the CHwB-network or individual representatives have had the opportunity to inform about the situation of Ukraine’s cultural heritage, as well as our cooperation and our project. One of CHwB Sweden’s board members and the director of the Maidan Museum have been appointed as experts in the EU Commission’s “Expert Sub-group for Safeguarding the Cultural Heritage in Ukraine”. The work has so far been aimed at formulating a series of recommendations concerning cultural heritage issues in the short and long term, directed to the EU and the governmental level in Ukraine.

Workshop in Tirana in autumn 2024 with participants from CHwB Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Sweden