Preserving Ukraine's Cultural Heritage

Cultural Heritage. The international effort to save Ukraine’s digital information about its cultural heritage, threatened by Russia’s invasion, continues apace.  As described by Heather Stephenson in Preserving Ukraine’s Cultural Heritage Online, Tufts Now, “a global network of volunteers has mobilized to preserve Ukrainian cultural heritage online. Using digital tools, they have saved data from more than 2,200 cultural websites and other sources on servers outside the country, providing a critical backup plan in case of loss or damage during the war.”  The network, Saving Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Online (SUCHO), consists of 1,300 volunteers, using open source tools and Slack.  The efforts and the volunteers are described in more detail in Meet the 1,300 librarians racing to back up Ukraine’s digital archives, by Pranshu Verma of The Washington Post (April 8, 2022).

Meanwhile, as reported by the Archeology Newsroom, on April 7, 2022, UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee identified 53 cultural sites in Ukraine that have been damaged in the war as of early April. Seven world heritage sites (six are cultural; one is natural) are located in Ukraine.

Philadelphia Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts (PVLA)

Philadelphia Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts (PVLA).  PVLA has issued its Winter Newsletter, which shares some of what PVLA has done over the last year, and what PVLA is looking forward to as we near the end of the first quarter of 2022.  PVLA remains dedicated to continuing to empower the artists whose work inspires, motivates, and touches us all.  Check out PVLA’s website to learn more about what PVLA, what its volunteer lawyers do, and how to seek help from the organization.

In good news for Philadelphia’s creative sector, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) recently approved PVLA to receive an American Rescue Plan grant from the NEA to help the arts and cultural sector recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. PVLA will receive $100,000 in operational support to allow it to prioritize the growth of PVLA’s programming and development efforts to enhance the organization’s capacity to meet the increased demand for pro bono legal services among the independent arts community within the Greater Philadelphia region.  

For more detail about the NEA’s grants, including the grants to fourteen Philadelphia arts organizations under the American Rescue Plan, read here.  The NEA’s announcement of the grants, totaling $57,750,000 to 567 arts organizations in all 50 states, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Washington, DC, explains how the grants will help the arts and cultural sector recover from the pandemic, one of the nation’s sectors hit hardest by the pandemic.  

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