Sustaining community through war: Green Theatre’s evolving role in Odesa
In partnership with Impact Hub Odesa, Green Theatre has transformed an open-air park into a vital community anchor for people navigating wartime Ukraine. By bringing physical safety, wellbeing support, cultural expression, and civil society together under one canopy, it helps sustain the human connections and quiet routines that prolonged conflict threatens to erode.
- Impact Hub Network
- Global team
In 2023, Green Theatre and Impact Hub Odesa launched Social Camp Odesa as a gathering point for Ukraine’s volunteer movement. More than 300 representatives of NGOs, charitable foundations, and volunteer groups came together in a courageous attempt to respond to an urgent moment. Alongside that initial gathering, dedicated support for families and a recovery space offered a sanctuary for people carrying the daily weight of wartime life and service. Yet as months turned into years, a deeper challenge emerged: how could an initial gathering become a lasting infrastructure for long-term urban resilience?
Since the full-scale invasion in 2022, Green Theatre has completely reshaped its operational model to answer that question. What was once a traditional open-air venue has evolved into a living, flexible ecosystem: a free-access green zone, a recreational haven with immediate access to shelter, and a launchpad for social action. Thousands of visits are recorded each month, including 2,895 in May, 3,393 in June, 3,121 in July, and 1,919 in August. People come to rest on sun loungers, meet on the lawns, or find a quiet moment beneath the trees, holding onto rare opportunities for respite amidst ongoing uncertainty.
That ability to rest relies on a deliberate investment in physical safety. During the war, Green Theatre built an underground shelter that can accommodate 50 people. In 2026, the team installed two additional mobile concrete shelters, each accommodating 30 people, bringing total on-site shelter capacity to 110. The entire one-hectare territory is mapped so anyone can reach a certified shelter within one minute. Crucially, when air raid alerts sound, these doors open to anyone in the surrounding neighbourhood, extending protection beyond the venue’s team and guests and turning it into a shelter for the wider district.
Within this protected setting, community life continues through an average of 80 to 120 activities and practices every month. Their breadth reflects the multi-layered needs people carry with them, spanning relief from exhaustion to opportunities to build, collaborate, and belong.
Through MISCE SYLY (“Place of Power”), somatic practices, yoga, Pilates, dance therapy, zen meditation, and support groups offer ways to process the profound mental and physical strain of war. The project actively serves 350 to 400 people monthly, maintaining permanent free-access quotas for military personnel, veterans, internally displaced people, and people with disabilities. Alongside the park’s open gates, these structured practices give citizens a reliable place to return and catch their breath.
That care extends to the change-makers working for others’ survival and wellbeing. Through Social Camp, Green Theatre provides its grounds, technical resources, and organisational backing to initiatives driving positive social change. It consistently collaborates with eight to nine permanent partner organisations and hosts four to eight one-off events each month, led by NGOs and volunteer groups. The solidarity behind the 2023 gathering now has a continuous, practical expression: a physical home where civic leaders can meet, collaborate, and sustain their momentum.
Cultural participation forms another vital layer of this resilience. Art-Form connects contemporary Ukrainian artists with the public through lectures, film screenings, poetry, music, and exhibitions, sustaining cultural life through the crisis. These artistic encounters sit alongside physical rehabilitation and civil society support, keeping creative expression alive as an everyday experience rather than a luxury.
Connecting these distinct initiatives is Shēn Tea House, a permanent space dedicated to Chinese tea traditions, including Gongfu Cha. It acts as an informal networking anchor where partners, visitors, and practitioners cross paths. Within an environment hosting so many different activities, it gives emerging relationships a calm, grounded space to deepen.
Together, these initiatives show how Green Theatre’s response has developed into an enduring community resource. Shelter provision helps make gathering possible. Free daily access allows rest without barriers or obligations. Wellbeing practices address accumulated exhaustion, while cultural life and technical support for civil society help people remain active authors of their community’s future. In partnership with Impact Hub Odesa, a recreational park has become a lasting infrastructure for hope, showing how safety, care, and human connection can remain rooted even through prolonged crisis.
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