Festivals For Ukraine Toolkit
YOUROPE – The European Festival Association together with Music Saves Ukraine, the humanitarian initiative created by Ukrainian Association of Music Events (UAME), released a new toolkit. It is titled “Festivals for Ukraine” and provides information about various measures and activities festival organizers can employ to use their festivals as a platform for raising funds and awareness for important causes.
The Festivals For Ukraine Toolkit was developed as part of YOUROPE’s three-year project “Future-Fit Festivals” (3F). The tools featured in this publication have been tested, iterated upon and successfully implemented by Music Saves Ukraine since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022.
Based on cooperation projects with YOUROPE and many of its member festivals as well as other European music festivals and events thousands of people were reached and significant funds were raised, which were used responsibly and effectively by Music Saves Ukraine to provide humanitarian aid in Ukraine.
The toolkit contains step-by-step guides, case studies and advice on how to implement various schemes and activities within events and festivals It is public and free to use for any festival or cultural event and can be viewed online or downloaded as a PDF. Transferable to other charitable purposes While the toolkit is based on case studies related to Music Saves Ukraine, the tools described possess a high degree of transferability and can easily be used to advance and raise for any other charitable cause: refugee aid, environmental action, inclusion and diversity, etc.
The Toolkit’s Structure The toolkit provides background on YOUROPE, its social awareness initiative Take A Stand as well as on UAME’s Music Saves Ukraine initiative and their mission. The main part features sections on fundraising and awareness-raising tools like artist bookings, discussion panels and speeches, special performances, bottles recycling, cup deposit and guest list donations, charity merchandise, auctions and raffles and others. The last part tells about special projects like Music Ambassadors Tour and Pohoda Loves Ukraine, which together with the festival collaborations helped Music Saves Ukraine further in their mission of raising funds and awareness for Ukraine.
The team behind the toolset The toolkit is the result of a collaboration between the teams of YOUROPE’s 3F project and the Music Saves Ukraine initiative. It also features quotes and materials provided by various YOUROPE member festivals among those ARTmania (RO), Das Fest (DE), Les Eurockeennes de Belfort (FR), OpenAir St.Gallen (CH), Pohoda Festival (SK), Superbloom (DE), Sziget (HU).
Quotes:
“YOUROPE is committed to helping our Ukrainian members, partners and friends for well over two years now. So that they can be heard, do humanitarian work and reach the right people on their mission. It feels good to see, despite the serious situation, how successfully our network has provided and continues to provide this urgently needed help.
Because of the relevance of this topic, this defining activity of our network during the past years has now also become part of our European project 3F. In this respect, this toolkit is several things in one: a documentation of successful work, another public communication tool for the important cause of our Ukrainian partners Music Saves UA and Ukrainian Association of Music Events (UAME), and an inspiration for everyone who wants to raise awareness and funds with their festival and cultural events.”
Holger Jan Schmidt (General Secretary YOUROPE)
“We would like to express our immense gratitude to YOUROPE and its members for the opportunity to work on this toolkit with them and for their unwavering support of everything we have done since our very first days. Together, they helped us raise hundreds of thousands of Euros, which translated into dozens of thousands of people helped. They cordially invited us to their festivals, where we could collect donations and bring Ukrainian artists, culture and our experiences to their visitors. All this support enabled us to continue to do our humanitarian work non-stop while working on ever more ambitious projects to help people in Ukraine and to promote the Ukrainian culture and cause abroad. With friends and partners like these, we are confident that, no matter how long it takes, we will see a day when we no longer need to save lives and rebuild what has been destroyed, but when we celebrate our freedom together in a peaceful, European Ukraine.”
Oleksandr Sanchenko (President of UAME | Music Saves Ukraine)
“For us, this toolkit is proof of the power of music and an opportunity to give something back to the wonderful festival community that has supported us. We hope that our experience and advice on how to work with festivals to raise awareness and funds for Ukraine will inspire even more action across the industry and result in an even bigger positive impact on the world we live in.”
Vlad Yaremchuk (partnership manager of UAME | Music Saves Ukraine & editor of the Toolkit)
