WHAT:

Impact strategy development for culture is always an exciting endeavour. The Impact Lab is one of the co-creators and responsible for impact measurement and reporting of the Ukrainian Woman, a Horizon Europe project of 2 Ukrainian and 5 EU and EEA-based culture, art, digital creation and impact organizations. They committed to supporting Ukraine by using culture and creative tools to discuss, explore, and present various war-related narratives and demonstrate resilience and strength through the lens of and with the focus on Ukrainian women. While, on the one hand, the project is a call to action to build a sense of human and artistic solidarity with suffering fellow neighbors, it also aims at equipping them with the necessary skills and opportunities to take their professional creative future into their own hands. The project will engage Ukrainian women to portray themselves through various cultural domains, such as visual and performing arts. Non-Ukrainian female artists will also be invited to participate by providing their artistic lens on the topic of a Ukrainian woman. While placing Ukrainian women in the spotlight, the project ultimately asks questions, provokes reflection and calls to action on a European scale on topics of gender equality, family, cultural heritage and identity, international relations and many more.

HOW:

The project addresses the pressing need to support and cooperate with Ukraine to develop and contribute to co-creating artistic innovations and cultural cooperation focused on Ukraine’s rebuilding and a new revival of European integration. In the framework of the Ukrainian Woman project, we intend to upscale the skills of participating women artists and support partners, internationalize artistic cooperation and integrate new tools and methods focused on impact-driven digital innovation supporting artists. Support of international partners will initiate a mutual learning process, organizing mass scale online exhibitions and events. The engagement of female artists, including emerging artists from Ukraine and other European countries, will pave the way for their meaningful contribution toward accelerating high-class artistic cooperation.

EXPECTED RESULT:

Creating the Ukrainian Women Cultural Cooperation Community will contribute to project institutionalization to ensure long-term impact. Ukrainian Woman will significantly impact Ukraine’s ability to support impact-driven policies in Central and Eastern Europe. Exchanges, short-term visits, mass-scale events, and capacity-building measures, including summer schools, will contribute to artistic excellence in developing impactful projects. The creation of the community of artists will be closely linked with the practice and engagement of a broader perspective of Ukrainian female artists. Overall, Ukrainian Woman will reach more than 100,000 people as visitors, at least 50,000 as dissemination audiences, involve 90 artists, produce 12 mass events, 10 exhibitions and 8 presentations, bringing together 300 people to its final conference in Cracow in the first ever European project of this kind.

Photos by Ann Bugaichuk, Olena Bohovyk, David Peinado, Lera Yuryn (via Pexels).

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