Blog & Newsletters

When we picture crisis response, we tend to picture logistics: trucks, tents, supply chains, spreadsheets. We rarely picture a designer. Yet some of the most persistent failures in emergency preparedness are, at root, design failures - and fixing them will take the very skills that the cultural and creative sectors have in abundance. Consider the objects that fill emergency kits and relief distributions. Too many are single-use, awkward to repair, and poorly matched to the cl

A Community of Practice is a group of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do, and who deepen their knowledge by interacting regularly. The term was coined by researchers Etienne Wenger and Jean Lave, and the idea is deceptively simple: people learn best not in isolation, but together - by sharing problems, comparing approaches and building knowledge collectively over time. What sets a Community of Practice apart from a mailing list or a network is that

Frugal innovation is the art of doing more with less: designing effective solutions using the fewest possible resources, and making them affordable, accessible and easy to maintain. It is less about big budgets and cutting-edge labs, and more about ingenuity - solving real problems with what is actually available. The concept is often associated with resource-constrained settings, where necessity drives creativity. A water filter made from locally sourced materials, a chargin

When disaster strikes or people are forced to flee, humanitarian agencies respond with what are known as Core Relief Items, or CRIs - the standard bundle of essentials that helps a family survive the first days and weeks. Blankets, sleeping mats, jerry cans, kitchen sets, tarpaulins and solar lamps: developed and distributed at scale, most famously by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), CRIs are the backbone of emergency response worldwide. They exist for good reason. Standardised

In March 2025, the European Commission unveiled its Preparedness Union Strategy – a set of thirty actions designed to help Europe cope with an era of overlapping crises, from floods and wildfires to pandemics, cyberattacks, and armed conflict. One recommendation quickly caught the public's attention: every household should be able to look after itself for at least the first 72 hours of an emergency. The logic is simple. After a major incident, it can take emergency services u

Welcome to the first OPEN RELIEF newsletter! We are excited to share the news that OPEN RELIEF, “Empowering Communities through Open-Source Creative Solutions for Crisis Preparedness and Humanitarian Innovation”, has officially launched! Funded by the European Union through the Creative Europe Programme, this 24-month project brings together partners from Croatia, Greece, and Ukraine to reimagine how communities prepare for crises. This newsletter will keep you updated on our

On 24 and 27 March 2026, the OPEN RELIEF consortium came together online for the project's official Kick-off Meeting, bringing together partners from Croatia, Greece, and Ukraine to launch a new European collaboration focused on humanitarian design, crisis preparedness, and community resilience. Held over two dedicated working sessions, the meeting marked the beginning of an ambitious Creative Europe project that will explore how culture, creativity, and open-source innovatio