INDEX Institute launches cultural fellowship for active servicemembers
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Institute for Documentation and Exchange (INDEX)
The Russo–Ukrainian war has changed not only the lives of millions of Ukrainians but also the conditions in which culture, journalism, and research are produced
Writers, artists, journalists, photographers and scholars who joined the Defence Forces have often had to put their professional and creative work on hold. At the same time, military service has given them access to experiences, environments and perspectives that are rarely visible from civilian life.
The Institute for Documentation and Exchange (INDEX) is launching Ukraine’s first fellowship programme for active members of the Defence Forces of Ukraine, supporting cultural projects that document experiences of the Russo-Ukrainian war.
INDEX Institute has announced an open call for active servicemembers interested in taking part in the programme. The programme responds to a practical problem. Conventional residencies and fellowships are often built around the assumption that participants can step away from their everyday responsibilities for weeks or months. Active servicemembers usually cannot. Their time, mobility and access to resources are shaped by the demands of military service. The fellowship therefore aims to create a format in which creative and intellectual work can continue without requiring participants to leave the military environment in which that work is being formed.
Another objective is to help bridge the gap between military and civilian communities by providing a platform, financial support and professional guidance that can help participants develop and bring to public attention work that might otherwise never reach its intended audience — or might not be realised at all because of constraints inherent to military service but absent from civilian life.
Servicemembers experience the war from a perspective that often remains inaccessible to civilian journalists, correspondents and reporters. This is not only about combat. It is also about the transition from civilian life to military service, relationships within units, the everyday routines of the armed forces, and their linguistic, regional and social diversity. If servicemembers remain merely the subjects of other people’s stories and reporting rather than the authors of their own testimonies, an important part of the experience of war risks being lost or understood exclusively from the outside.
A new intelligentsia is also emerging within the military — a new cultural and social force whose energy may be lost unless it is given public space, access to professional guidance and the financial means to develop its work. Such a programme can strengthen Ukrainian society by bringing forward new authors, perspectives and experiences, while enabling servicemembers to remain part of the country’s cultural life and contribute to public debate and social development — areas in which military voices remain underrepresented because of the constraints of service.
Whether that energy becomes part of Ukraine’s wider cultural life will depend partly on whether servicemembers have the resources and platforms to sustain it. Military service severely limits the time and financial capacity available for long-term creative work. Supporting projects now can help ensure that ideas, texts, images and testimonies produced during the war are not postponed indefinitely or lost altogether
The fellowship is open to media professionals, creative practitioners, and researchers in the humanities and social sciences who are currently serving in the Defence Forces of Ukraine. Each participant will receive a monthly stipend of €1,300 for two months, access to sports or psychotherapy sessions, expert support in developing their projects, and assistance in presenting their work to a wider audience.
Applications are available via the link.
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