What is the Sustainable Ukrainian Canadian Heritage Program?
Sustainable Ukrainian Canadian Heritage (SUCH) is a multifaceted research and education program of the Kule Folklore Centre at the University of Alberta
The program's uniqueness lies in its combination of academic objectives and connection to the needs of community organizations, first and foremost - community archives. SUCH aims to serve as a mediator between experts and newcomers in the field, assisting in research, education, and technical support for projects related to the preservation of Ukrainian-Canadian heritage. Please read our latest newsletter for the most recent updates on the SUCH program, or visit Useful links for all of our past newsletters.
SUCH program became possible thanks to the support of Peter Arabchuk, who generously contributed to the University of Alberta to create a program "to study and document history and culture of Ukrainian Canadians defined broadly, including those people sometimes thought of as marginal to the Ukrainian Canadian experience and support the Ukrainian Canadian archives and cultural heritage collections."
It aims to:
- raise awareness about the importance of cultural and historical heritage of Ukrainian Canadians,
- provide a ground for networking, collaboration, education, and resource sharing among academic, research, and memory institutions, cultural heritage repositories, archivists and other heritage professionals, community organizations, community archivists, and researchers studying Ukrainian Canadians, and
- offer innovative ways to assist Ukrainian Canadian repositories and organizations in preservation of and providing access to their rich cultural heritage.
Main components of the SUCH program are:
- shared online network (SUCH-network): to create a shared space to serve as a gateway to various Ukrainian Canadian historical and cultural heritage repositories/collections,
- education: workshops, seminars, webinars, and other hands-on events will be offered to develop skills and ensure proper management and care of archival materials,
- grants: to hire staff to work on and complete an archival project for the organization, to purchase archival supplies necessary to complete a project, or for professional development to train existing staff to work with archival records in order to complete a project,
- consultations: if you have a question about archives or archiving, we can answer it or refer you to an expert or a resource that can address it.
- resource development: to create online and print publications that will present innovative ideas, share successful projects and findings, and provide practical tools to assist in proper documentation and preservation of Ukrainian Canadian heritage into the future, and make it readily available to researchers from a wide spectrum of disciplines and to the general public,
- events: organisation of conferences, symposia, and other networking events to facilitate exchange of ideas and best practices, to raise awareness about importance of archives, and provide knowledge exchange among various stakeholders.
The Kule Folklore Centre is pleased to announce the launch of the SUCH-network online database.
Suchnetwork.ca is a place where various Ukrainian Canadian collections can be searched in one cohesive place. Your organization can contribute to it too. Do you maintain your organizational archive? Do you house other archival collections? Do you want your collections to be discoverable? Now it is time to fill it with information about different Ukrainian archival collections in Canada, as well as about the institutions that hold them. We are encouraging organizations, especially those that do not have their own online databases, to contribute their own descriptions (with our help)! Contact us.