Ukraine Four Years On: Resilience and Rebuilding Connection Through Culture

Today marks four years since Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine.

The war continues to shape life across the country and far beyond its borders. Millions of people have been displaced, relocated within Ukraine or across Europe, and are now rebuilding daily life in unfamiliar places. Others are returning from military service or coming back to communities that have changed during their absence.

As ECF Director André Wilkens has said, this war concerns Europe as a whole. It is a battle over Europe’s future and over the values that hold our societies together. The response to Ukraine has shown how strongly European solidarity is felt when people recognise their shared fate.

Communities in transition

Four years on, the challenge many communities face is social as much as material. Displacement, return and migration have altered local realities. Neighbours are new. Families live across borders. Diaspora communities are forming and evolving across Europe.

These changes create distance between people who do not yet share experiences, trust or a common sense of how to move forward together. At the same time, community connection remains central to wellbeing, resilience and the ability to rebuild everyday life.

How culture helps people reconnect

Cultural and artistic practices offer practical ways to respond to this reality. Community based art, dialogue centred projects and collaborative cultural work create shared spaces where people can meet, express experience and take part in something together. These processes support emotional resilience, recovery, rebuild trust and open space for new relationships to form across difference.

Through creativity and empathy, cultural work helps communities navigate the complexity of displacement, transition and return while imagining new forms of belonging.

Culture Helps Solidarity: new opportunities in 2026

Culture Helps Solidarity is a Creative Europe funded programme running from October 2025 to March 2028. It is delivered by a consortium of Insha Osvita (Kyiv), VETERANKA Movement (Kyiv), zusa (Berlin) and the European Cultural Foundation (Amsterdam). The programme provides funding, learning and exchange to help Ukrainian cultural professionals remain active, connected and able to support their communities.

Project Grants and Collaboration Grants are now open under Culture Helps Solidarity, supporting cultural initiatives that help people reconnect, rebuild trust and take part in shared cultural life after displacement, transition and return. The calls fund both community-based projects in Ukraine and cross-border partnerships with organisations in Creative Europe countries, with deadlines on 31 March and 16 April 2026, respectively.

Cultural spaces are bringing people together to meet, share experiences and work on common challenges after displacement and separation. Through these everyday encounters and cross-border collaborations, trust grows again and communities begin to shape their future together.