Design for Ukraine’s heritage: engaging international students during times of war through design activism
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Abstract
The Russian invasion of Ukraine - which began in February
2022 - has caused, and continues to inflict, a substantial number
of deaths and destruction of buildings, including museums,
cultural institutions, and heritage. Despite the instruments
of international law put in place to protect cultural heritage,
alarming reports of the removal and displacement of museums’
collections from occupied areas continue to emerge.
In the amid of this complex context, how can design researchers
and educators prompt students towards the development
of contributions for emergencies such as war? Can
digital platforms be used to support such development? And
how can these technologies be employed to safeguard and
raise awareness about at-risk heritage?
Drawing from the legacy of design activism and socially
responsible design, the research aims to provide an answer
to these questions, presenting the results of the Design for
Ukraine’s Heritage (D4UH) experience. D4UH is an educational
project, the first step of a broader strategy that has
the goal of creating a network of European institutions and
NGOs to envision and develop possible solutions to safeguard
the Ukrainian museums’ heritage during and after
times of war. D4UH pairs 20 Ukrainian museums with 20 international
students from architecture and design schools,
united by the desire to give support to the Ukrainian heritage.
Partners, students and museums are asked to collaborate in
the collection of videos, pictures and interviews to design
the Virtual Museum of Ukrainian Museums, which acts as a
statement of Ukrainian museums’ current situation. Offering
the chance of engaging, researching, curating and designing
the virtual exhibition’s narrative space, students and design
educators can directly experience how the action of designing
can tackle intricate cultural, social and political issues.
The expected results of the project are, in fact, not merely to
exhibit Ukrainian cultural heritage, but also to consider the
relevance of museum institutions themselves as guardians
of temporality to be interpreted and protected, especially in
times of war, because of their contribution to the community’s
progress