EU Call:
Creative Europe, CREA-CULT-2025-COOP-1
Project partners:
1. IM INDUSTRIES, Zagreb, Croatia – coordinator.
2. Kyiv National University of Technologies and Design, Kyiv, Ukraine
3. LATRA EE, Mytilene, Greece
Project duration:
2026–2028, 24 months.
Project abstract
As Europe faces intensifying, overlapping crises—including climate disasters, geopolitical conflict, and public health emergencies – the Preparedness Union Strategy (2025) has prioritised the development of a universal 72-hour survival kit for all EU households. Yet both this kit and the widely used Core Relief Items (CRIs), developed by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), for global humanitarian response, remain largely single-use, difficult to repair, and environmentally unsustainable. Despite having the necessary innovation skills, cultural and creative sector (CCS) professionals remain excluded from civil protection and humanitarian design ecosystems. Open Relief addresses this critical gap by placing CCS professionals at the centre of preparedness innovation. The project empowers them to collaborate with humanitarian workers and community members to co-develop 11 open-source design objects –including water filters, modular shelters, and repairable preparedness tools. These solutions will be scalable, locally replicable, environmentally sustainable, and freely distributed to more than 1,000 humanitarian NGOs across Europe and Ukraine. Operating in Ukraine, Croatia, and Greece, the project draws on each country’s distinct expertise: Ukraine’s frugal, citizen-led innovation under conflict; Croatia’s post-conflict recovery; and Greece’s frontline refugee response experience. Through multidisciplinary workshops and field testing, Open Relief will train 150 artists, 100 humanitarian workers, and 300 community members in humanitarian design, frugal innovation, and crisis literacy. A digital campaign will generate over 500,000 impressions, raising public awareness of CCS contributions to resilience and highlighting Creative Europe’s leadership in preparedness innovation. Open Relief reimagines preparedness as a CCS-led, community-inclusive process – where affected citizens not only survive the first 72 hours but recover, adapt, and thrive beyond them.
KNUTD team:
Danylo KOSENKO, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Head of the Department of Interior and Furniture Design, Project Manager from KNUTD
Kalyna PASHKEVICH, Doctor of Engineering, Professor, Dean of the Faculty of Design
Tetyana BULHAKOVA, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Interior and Furniture Design
Oleksandra SHMELOVA-NESTERENKO, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Associate Professor of the Department of Interior and Furniture Design
Natalia RYSHKEVYCH, Ph.D., Associate Professor of the Department of Interior and Furniture Design
Violetta SEMENCHENKO, Assistant of the Department of Interior and Furniture Design
Project website and social media pages:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/open-relief/home/
https://www.facebook.com/openrelief1/
https://www.instagram.com/open_relief
Project events:
March 24 And 27, 2026. OPEN RELIEF Consortium Kick-Off Meeting
During the meeting, project coordinator Ivan Mrdjen (IM Industries ) introduced the participants to the main steps of the project implementation, the content and deadlines for the work packages, and the project budget. The participants of the meeting discussed the distribution of responsibilities for the implementation of individual work packages, and identified priority tasks at the first stage of work.
KNUTD researchers Oleksandra Shmelova-Nesterenko , Associate Professor of the Department of Interior and Furniture Design, Tetyana Bulhakova , Associate Professor of the Department of Interior and Furniture Design, and Kalyna Pashkevych , Dean of the Faculty of Design, KNUTD, together with colleagues from IM INDUSTRIES (Croatia) and LATRA (Greece), tested and discussed the methodological approaches and training modules of OPEN RELIEF, exchanging expertise in three complementary areas: community engagement strategies and participatory design methods; lean innovation and digital manufacturing; inclusive and humanitarian design. Andrea Medvegy (IM INDUSTRIES) presented approaches to community engagement and a methodology for developing an action plan for volunteers in case of emergencies. Oleksandra Shmelova-Nesterenko (KNUTD) conducted a workshop for the participants of the meeting, during which the teams developed a concept for the minimally sufficient arrangement of space for temporary accommodation of 40 people, providing seating, storage and privacy areas using simple, adaptive and resource-efficient modular solutions. This approach is in line with the lean innovation methodology developed by KNUTD within the project. Together with Nancy Tryfonopoulou (LATRA), the teams worked out solutions to meet people’s needs in the first 72 hours of an emergency, and later practiced a crisis scenario in a refugee camp in a role-playing format
