Programs in Partnership with Ukraine
This program strengthens cooperation between Ukraine and Germany in the field of contemporary remembrance culture. It combines a five-day study visit to Germany for Ukrainian civil society professionals and journalists with the development of Testaments, a multilingual digital exhibition documenting the lives and legacies of Ukrainians who have died in the context of the war. The focus of the program is an exchange of best practices and innovative approaches to remembrance culture, particularly in the context of war.
The program aims to strengthen ethical, evidence-based, and trauma-informed approaches to documentation and public remembrance. Through professional exchange, participants will expand their skills, build international partnerships, and explore practices that can be adapted to the Ukrainian context. The program also seeks to increase access to verified Ukrainian remembrance narratives in Germany and beyond.
The program brings together Ukrainian professionals working in civil society, independent media, documentation initiatives, memorial projects, community-based remembrance, and public communication around loss. Participants are selected for their ability to share knowledge within their organizations and communities and to contribute to the development of responsible remembrance practices across Ukraine.
Memorial is a Ukrainian NGO working on the documentation and commemoration of war-related casualties through journalism, film, exhibitions, and other public formats. As our partner, Memorial contributes to the program’s content and methodology, supports participant selection, curates the digital exhibition, and helps integrate project outcomes into ongoing remembrance and communication activities.
The program is generously funded by the German Federal Foreign Office.
The program strengthens independent regional media in Ukraine, particularly in frontline, liberated, and rural areas. It combines online learning with a five-day capacity-building and exchange program in Berlin, connecting Ukrainian journalists and media professionals with German and European experts and institutions.
The program aims to strengthen the editorial and financial sustainability of regional media, promote inclusive and fact-based reporting, and improve participants’ ability to counteract local disinformation attempts. It also supports the integration of Ukrainian regional media perspectives into European professional networks and dialogue.
The program brings together journalists and media professionals from independent regional media outlets across Ukraine, with a particular focus on frontline, liberated, and rural communities. Participants are selected based on their regional engagement, relevance to local information environments, and their commitment to applying new approaches within their newsrooms.
United Ukraine is a Ukrainian organization with experience in civil society and media-related initiatives, including international advocacy, strategic communication, countering disinformation, and connecting Ukrainian and European stakeholders. As the Ukrainian project partner, United Ukraine supports participant selection, program coordination, stakeholder engagement, and follow-up with participants before and after the exchange.
The program is generously funded by the German Federal Foreign Office.
Together with the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation, Cultural Vistas administers the Cultural Horizons program, which provides residencies throughout the EU for Ukrainian artists and cultural practitioners.
In November 2023, the expert exchange “PRESERVE & DOCUMENT: Expert Meeting & Workshop” took place in Berlin. Twenty-one representatives of civil society organizations from all parts of Ukraine traveled to Berlin and exchanged best practice examples in support of the country during and after the end of the ongoing Russian war of aggression. In the PRESERVE priority area, the project aims to protect and preserve Ukraine’s cultural heritage and memory, as they are also targets of the Russian war of aggression. In the DOCUMENT priority area, the project supports the legally admissible documentation of human rights violations, war crimes, and crimes against humanity in order to help bring justice to the victims and survivors of these acts.
This virtual program brought together gender equality experts from Ukraine and Germany in order to strengthen and promote long-term cooperation.
Twenty-five women’s rights activists and gender equality experts from all over Ukraine met with representatives of women’s associations and NGOs working for the protection and equality of women in Germany. The practical focus on successful case studies from both countries was rounded off with the participants developing concrete plans to expand and continue their collaboration in their home communities.
This exchange introduced civil society professionals from Ukraine to Germany’s memorial and remembrance culture.
15 professionals from across Ukraine with expertise in areas such as memorial preservation, archaeology, ethnography, and pedagogy took part in meetings with their German counterparts and received new insights into Germany’s coming-to-terms with problematic elements of its past in workshops and expert discussions, thus strengthening their international networks and initiating new collaborations between both countries. Following their return to various regions of Ukraine, participants organized local events to share their newly acquired knowledge with a wider audience in their home communities.
With the aim of strengthening the work of civic organizations in Ukraine which focus on resettling and supporting internally displaced persons (IDPs), this program brings together Ukrainian IDPs and Integration Practitioners in Berlin to discuss best practices.
The study tour in September 2018 brought thirteen integration practitioners from various Ukrainian cities together in Berlin to meet with representatives from German civil society organizations, refugee entrepreneurship programs, volunteer initiatives, and officials from the Office of the Federal Commissioner for Migration, Refugees and Integration. The goal of the tour was to foster discussions among integration practitioners about best practices for integrating newcomers and strengthening the capacity of civil society in two seemingly different contexts—Ukraine and Germany. After their return, all of the Ukrainian integration specialists implemented action plans in their regions, ranging from information events for local governments to interviews and workshops with young people, thereby passing on the approaches learned from the program to their local communities.
This high-level visitor program for Ukrainian journalists organized by Cultural Vistas in 2016 aims to strengthen civil society in Ukraine focusing on press-government interaction.
Participating Ukrainian journalists represented media from the national and regional levels, and included reporters from TV, online, print, and radio media outlets. They met with journalists from German news media such as the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel, Radio Berlin Brandenburg, the Federal Press Conference, and Der Spiegel, as well as with government officials in the Bundestag, German Federal Press Office, and the Federal Foreign Office.
Following their time in Berlin, participants published articles and reported in their own media about press-government interaction in Germany. In addition, they held presentations for their colleagues on aspects of press-government interaction that could be applied in their work in Ukraine.
Watch Vladyslav Burbela's video on press-government interaction in Germany Read Pavlo Shapoval's pamphlet on press-government interaction in Germany
Following their return to Ukraine, a meeting was held between the journalists and government communications officials who had previously participated in Cultural Vistas’ Strategic Communication Workshop in Berlin in 2015. The journalists and government officials collectively developed suggestions for improving press-government interaction in Ukraine at the national and regional levels, including commitments from each participant to enact specific changes in their purview.
The workshop series for communication officers of the Ukrainian government deepens their knowledge of strategic communication and effective interaction with the media.
In 2015, Cultural Vistas organized a weeklong workshop for government communications officials from Ukraine who represented the national, state, and local levels. Participants met with their German counterparts and communications trainers from a range of companies and government agencies, and were able to further hone their communications practices in a follow-up workshop in Kiev.
