Culture Bridges programme was offering grant funding and capacity building for the cultural and creative sector in Ukraine to raise its capacity and to enable it to cooperate more effectively with the EU. It was officially launched in November 2017 and ended in July 2020.
The Grant Programme within Culture Bridges consisted of three categories of grants: International Mobility, National Cooperation Projects and International Cooperation Projects. In six grant calls across the three categories, the Programme received 2,006 applications. Among them, 120 grants were awarded: 87 International Mobility Grants, 17 International Cooperation Grants and 16 National Cooperation Grants.
Apart from the Grant Programme, Culture Bridges offered a set of capacity building opportunities for the local Cultural and Creative Industries (CCI) sector and supported a number of special projects:
- Cultural Management Skills Training Sessions
10 two-day training sessions on cultural management skills were organised, attracting 187 participants. All participants were also offered the opportunity to apply for seed-funding for the implementation of a small cultural project, as a result, 22 seed-funded projects in nine regions of Ukraine (Ivano-Frankivsk, Uzhhorod, Cherkasy, Khmelnytskyi, Rivne, Donetsk, Poltava, Dnipro, and Kherson).
- Creative Europe Applications Development Workshops
10 workshops were organised to introduce Ukrainian organisations to international experience of successful Creative Europe applications and project delivery with the total audience of 189 participants.10 participants later submitted 12 Creative, two of these were successful.
- Creative Europe Study Tours
To complement the workshops, the programme also organised four Creative Europe Study Tours to Slovenia, Spain, Denmark and Greece for representatives of 28 Ukrainian organisations. This activity was primarily aimed to facilitate the establishment of partnerships between Ukraine and EU and demonstrate successful cultural projects in the EU.
- EUNIC joint projects
17 European Union National Institutes for Culture worked together on six EUNIC joint projects, funded by the programme. These six projects reached nearly 10,000 participants in 20 regions of Ukraine.
- Maidan European Debate Club
In addition, Culture Bridges supported the production of Maidan European Debate Club, an international TV show encouraging a critical discussion about the future direction of Central Europe. A series of 10 episodes was broadcast in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Belarus, Georgia and Ukraine. Its production and broadcast were managed by the Czech Centre.
Culture Bridges was funded by the European Union under the EU's support for the implementation of the Association Agreement between the EU and Ukraine and was managed by the British Council in partnership with the European Union National Institutes for Culture.
