Training Ukrainian students to restore the cultural heritage

Hi, my name is Elena Amodei from Palazzo Spinelli Art and Restoration Institute in Florence, Italy. I am running this campaign to raise funds for lodging and travel expenses for a group of 14 Ukrainian students and professors who are coming to Palazzo Spinelli for a special hands-on advanced paper restoration course.

In the brutal war being waged by Russia in Ukraine, many invaluable art objects have been damaged or completely lost. Among the places bombarded and burned are over 1000 libraries and museums that preserved antique manuscripts, books, prints and other paper objects. Countless have been completely burned and destroyed, but fortunately, some have survived.

Palazzo Spinelli, one of the oldest European schools of art restoration, has launched an initiative to help train and educate the Ukrainian students and artists in the techniques of restoration of all kinds of cultural heritage objects and share our decades of accumulated knowledge and, most importantly, practical experience in this field.

We are aiming to train the students who would be able to not only restore the cultural heritage objects damaged during this brutal war, but to later also form the rapid-response art restoration teams in Ukraine to help with the initial response to the damage that often, even though well-intended, due to the lack of skills often does more damage to the affected objects.

We want to help the Ukrainian people preserve and rebuild their cultural heritage. This May 2025 we will hold a special advanced paper restoration course, held in our laboratories in Florence, Italy, where we will train the first 14 art and restoration department students and professors coming from Kyiv and Kharkiv. This particular course is aimed at sharing our decades of expertise in restoring various paper objects of cultural heritage (books, manuscripts, etc.) and will provide an intensive hands-on practical laboratory experience.

The course participants making a long and arduous trip from Ukraine to Italy and we are asking for your help! Your donations will be used to cover the lodging and translation expenses in Florence, Italy for this important initiative.

Any donation, small or large, helps immensely. Thank you for supporting us!