Berlin offers numerous opportunities to share resources, knowledge, ideas and creativity. The “Sharing to Empower” project uses these opportunities to connect people affected by the war in Ukraine with each other, as well as with the urban space and its horizontal, socially oriented initiatives. Together with the participants, we identify personal and local potential over the course of the project and test existing and new forms of sharing, caring and creative activism. At the same time, we explore how newly arrived residents can become part of Berlin’s diverse commons community.

Practices of sharing, mutual support and cohesion are part of Ukrainian history and culture, as well as traditions of neighbourhood and ‘toloka’ (collective help for those in need; collective performance of various forms of work in the community). These characteristics reflect the centuries-long journey of survival, resilience and resistance of the Ukrainian people. We see this in the way Ukraine resists imperial aggression from Russia and stands up for its subjectivity.

In exploring the culture of sharing, we draw on practices based on Ukrainian traditions and cultural memory. The knowledge, personal stories and skills of the participants are therefore an integral part of the project. In this way we create a space in which people can process their experiences of war and migration, while searching for a new perception of themselves

In the first year of our project, we focused on working with residents of shared accommodation centres for refugees, where the relationship to one’s own space and the sharing of resources undergoes a new dynamic. The limited availability of individual space forces people to rethink their ideas of privacy and to deal with limited personal space differently. Together with the residents, we explored issues of consciously sharing both material and spatial resources. It was important to consider one’s own needs and the needs of others, and to develop common rules and agreements. Living together in this constrained situation requires a constant balancing act between the protection of individual privacy and the collective sharing of resources.

In parallel, we reflected on the issue of ‘being temporarily at home’ and creating a safer space in a shelter that serves as a temporary living space and where there are different forms of exclusion and isolation. People who are in a prolonged search for permanent housing experience a temporary home, while the feeling of being on the move remains present and the future is uncertain. This is why we also focus on developing resilience skills and finding the flexibility between the sense of arrival and the awareness of moving on. For us, this project is a sensitive and slow process of building trust and responding to the needs of different people. Contradictions, tensions and mistakes are part of it and part of the uncertainty in which we find ourselves together.

The project started in 2023 and continues in 2024 and 2025.