Backup Ukraine: a Participatory Cultural Archive

Read the campaign story

Backup Ukraine emerged in 2022 as a collaboration around recording cultural heritage threatened by war. Contemporary reporting identifies Virtue, Polycam, Blue Shield Denmark and the Danish UNESCO National Commission. The initiative adapted smartphone-based capture into digital models that could contribute to a cultural archive. An April announcement explicitly warned against uncoordinated public capture and limited the intended activity to places outside immediate conflict.

The One Club’s entry describes archival expertise and measures to protect collection locations. A later D&AD interview discusses the difficulty of managing uploads and sensitive geodata as participation grew. These accounts establish a project and its evolving workflow. They do not establish that every scan was suitable for reconstruction, that every captured object was independently verified, or that a cloud archive can never be lost.

Editorial interpretation: the campaign offered an action whose output could outlast the communication. Participation produced a record rather than only an expression of support. That creates a more demanding responsibility for the organiser. The value of a record depends on its permissions, description, quality and future accessibility. A large upload count can therefore coexist with a much smaller set of records ready for a specialist purpose.

A responsible adaptation starts with the people who will use and maintain the material. A museum, community archive or conservation team may require different capture standards and access controls. Contributors also need to understand what should not be recorded. The creative story should make the useful action understandable without implying that volunteers ought to accept physical danger or surrender control over personal or culturally sensitive material.

Design contribution rules with the receiving experts

Before inviting a community to document anything, ask the intended archive or specialist partner what a usable contribution requires. Define object identification, permission, file quality and review steps. Include examples of unsuitable submissions. A campaign that lowers the capture barrier but leaves classification and rights unresolved can shift hidden labour to a small institution. Budget for review and correction as part of the participation model.

Treat location and context as potentially harmful data

A photograph or model can reveal more than the object itself, including where it is kept or who has access. Decide what should be withheld, generalized or reviewed before publication. Do not promise anonymity merely because a contributor’s name is absent. A local heritage project should consult custodians about sacred, private or vulnerable material and provide a practical withdrawal or correction process where appropriate.

Plan the archive after the publicity ends

Assign responsibility for storage, access, format migration and institutional handover before launch. Test whether a second person can find, interpret and reuse a record without help from its creator. Track accepted and usable records separately from app downloads or raw uploads. A modest archive with clear ownership and durable documentation may be more useful than a large collection whose future depends on a temporary campaign team.

A small test for another brief

A local museum runs a supervised workshop documenting a small set of approved objects already inside its collection.

Count accepted records, review time, permission completeness and successful specialist reuse. Keep awareness and participation figures separate from preservation outcomes.

Stop if safety, ownership, cultural permission or future stewardship cannot be established for the material.

• Have collection staff select objects and approve access, handling and publication rights.
• Use a short capture guide and a review queue rather than immediate public uploads.
• Test retrieval, export and correction with the museum team before inviting more contributors.