Project Report: Integration through Creativity in Ukraine
SGS 2024 Grantee: Association of Community Initiatives Support “ASSA”, Kharkiv, Ukraine
Project: New Kharkiv residents. Integration through creativity
The city of Kharkiv is located 30 kilometres from the Russian border. Almost every day its residents experience shelling. Despite this, the city is home to approximately 1.2 million residents, and internally displaced persons from settlements in the Kharkiv region located close to the front lines are constantly arriving. As of 1 March, 203,900 internally displaced persons (IDPs) were registered in Kharkiv. Among this number are many elderly people, people with disabilities, and children. These people have lost their homes, their usual way of life, and sometimes their loved ones. They are all experiencing stress, so the issues of psychological support and socialisation in their new place of residence are becoming key.
Our project, with the financial support of The BEARR Trust, attempted to address these problems through creativity.
Art therapy sessions were conducted for children and adults among the IDPs. There were yoga and relaxation sessions for women, and collage and colour therapy, as well as intuitive drawing, for children and their parents. An interactive lecture on the unusual history of Ukraine was also held, during which participants selected fragments for ancient ceramics, studied rushnyky (embroidered ritual cloths) and their symbols, learned to write in Ruthenian as it appears on ancient Ukrainian currency, and held 5,500-year-old ceramics in their hands.
For young people, we conducted a project within the project. It was called “One-Breath Cinema”. Teenagers aged 15-18 learned to create short videos up to 1 minute long on their smartphones. These are mood films, impressionistic films. As psychologists assert, they act as an anti-stress remedy to express and release the emotions that have accumulated in our teenagers – the children of war.
The project included Playback Theatre. The participants – young people and adults – familiarised themselves with the techniques and basic principles of Playback Theatre’s work and analysed examples of performances. The group was able to try out how it works at the project’s closing event, presenting a spontaneous performance on the topic of the adaptation of IDPs, and receiving feedback from the audience in response to the questions posed. Participants will be able to use these methods as a tool for working with their community, ensuring their voices are heard.
Training sessions on community cohesion and civic engagement were conducted with the aim of socialising internally displaced persons, involving them in community activities and joint initiatives with residents of the communities, civic engagement’ and ways of interacting with communities:
- Project management and social entrepreneurship
- Volunteering and community work
- Elements of fundraising: how to find money for your own initiatives
- Media literacy and countering propaganda: how to talk about it with community members
- Public activities and how to interact with communities
Our project was written about on the website of the Department of Social Policy of Kharkiv City Council, and the closing event was attended by representatives of the authorities, public organisations including the project partner – Kharkiv Regional Youth Public Organisation “Kharkiv Volunteer Centre,” – the Centre for Children and Youth Creativity No. 6 of the Kharkiv City Council, public figures, project participants, and community representatives.
Having gained experience and feedback with expressions of gratitude, comments and best wishes from participants, the staff of the organisation “Association in Support of Public Initiatives ‘ASSA'” are planning further activities to continue this work.
Our organisation sincerely thanks The BEARR Trust for their support in implementing a high-quality and much-needed project for the community.
Photos by Anna Ulanovska.
Contact:
Anna Ulanovska,
President,
Association ‘ASSA’
