Project Grants
Over the course of the Culture Helps Solidarity programme, at least 60 project grants will be awarded through four thematic calls. The four themes are: Community (Dis-)Connections: How Culture Helps and Has Its Limits (2026), Memory in Action (2026), Community Spaces as Safer Environments (2027), and Ecologies of Care (2027).
The second Culture Helps Solidarity / Культура допомагає: Солідарність call for Project Grants opened on August 18 2026 and will close on October 6 2026.
The second call for Projects Grants of Culture Helps Solidarity focuses on memory and commemoration projects that work responsibly with the lived experiences of people affected by Russia’s war against Ukraine. The call will support cultural and community-based initiatives that create meaningful forms of remembrance, documentation (both analog and digital), public reflection, and commemoration while respecting the dignity, safety, and agency of those whose stories and losses are represented.
This call supports small-scale cultural projects that engage with the experiences, memories, and histories of people directly affected by Russia’s war against Ukraine, including but not limited to veterans, families of the fallen, displaced communities, local residents,people who have experienced loss, captivity, injury, or displacement, and witnesses of wartime events. We invite cultural workers, artists, researchers, community organisers, memory prac-titioners, and civil society initiatives based in Ukraine and across Europe to develop projects that approach remembrance as a careful, inclusive, and community-led practice. Through artistic, educational, research-based, or participatory formats, projects should create meaningful opportunities for reflection, strengthen local and collective memory across generations, amplify diverse voices, and help people feel seen and heard. Ultimately, the call seeks to support cultural practices that contribute to a more responsible public conversation about the ongoing impact and aftermath of Russia’s war against Ukraine, both within Ukraine and across Europe.
The first 2026 round of Culture Helps Solidarity Project Grants supports 16 cultural initiatives working directly with communities affected by Russia’s war against Ukraine. These projects are rooted in everyday places where recovery and connection are needed most: local cultural spaces, workshops, community groups, youth settings, refugee networks and creative gatherings.
The selected grantees are based mainly in Ukraine, alongside applicants from Poland, Germany, the Czech Republic and Moldova. Their projects reach veterans, internally displaced people, Ukrainian refugees, women, young people, blind authors, migrant communities and local residents rebuilding trust after loss, displacement and disruption. The methods are varied, but deeply practical: collective music-making, theatre, ceramics, writing, photography, storytelling, movement, creative laboratories, local festivals and participatory exhibitions.
What connects the selected Project Grants is their attention to lived experience. One project uses ceramics to support injured veterans in recovery. Another creates a participatory photo exhibition with blind authors from Ukraine. Others bring Ukrainian women together through theatre and writing, support young people’s mental wellbeing through storytelling, create spaces for refugees and local communities to meet, or use music and movement to rebuild confidence and social connection. These are not abstract acts of solidarity. They are small, concrete cultural practices through which people begin to feel seen, heard and less alone.
Together, the Project Grants show how culture helps solidarity take root at the community level. They support people not only as audiences, but as participants, makers, neighbours and storytellers. In doing so, they help protect the spaces where people can process their experiences, rebuild relationships, and take part in cultural life despite the ongoing impact of war.
This first Culture Helps Solidarity / Культура допомагає: Солідарність call for Project Grants was launched at a moment when community connections across Ukraine and within Ukrainian diasporas continue to be reshaped by the consequences of war.
Forced displacement, relocation within the country or abroad, and the return of both women and men from military service have altered social landscapes, creating new forms of distance between people and disrupting familiar ties. Many communities are still in the process of forming new relationships, often without a shared sense of understanding.
Yet community connections remain central to people’s support, resilience, and emotional well-being. They frequently develop under conditions shaped by trauma, structural barriers, and tensions between individual needs and collective action. These challenges affect many groups, including displaced persons, diaspora communities, families with children, and vulnerable groups such as veterans.
Cultural and artistic practices offer distinct ways of responding to these complexities. Socially engaged art, community based and dialogical practices, collaborative approaches, and the sensitive use of therapeutic elements can create spaces where people reconnect across differences, rebuild trust, and imagine new forms of belonging.
Through creativity and empathy, artistic processes can help communities move beyond immediate limitations while also acknowledging the ethical and emotional boundaries of cultural work.
