POLYCAM X UNESCO | BACKUP UKRAINE | 2022
Protecting a Nation's Memory from Bombs with Nothing but a Smartphone / Polycam X UNESCO "BACKUP UKRAINE"
In 2022, Russian bombing threatened to wipe out not just lives in Ukraine, but also the sculptures and churches that had watched over its cities for centuries. So creators from the ad industry came up with an idea: turn the smartphone everyone already owns into a tool for protecting cultural treasures.
The problem
According to Blue Shield (an international organization for protecting cultural heritage), destroying a country's cultural heritage is the fastest way to erase its identity. Russia was denying Ukraine's very identity, and sandbags and protective covers alone couldn't keep everything safe.
The insight
If you can't physically stop something from being destroyed, you can at least preserve it as data before it's gone—evacuating a nation's memory into the cloud, beyond the reach of bombs. Since experts alone couldn't cover everything, UNESCO did something it had never done before: it gave every ordinary citizen the power to create 3D scans.
The idea
They opened up a 3D scanning app called Polycam for free use across Ukraine. With just a few minutes of filming on a smartphone, statues and monuments could be permanently saved to the cloud, becoming blueprints for rebuilding if they were ever destroyed. They also built in a privacy feature to hide location data, carefully guarding against looting or targeted bombing. Almost as soon as the call went out, citizens in Kyiv and Odesa started volunteering.
What happened
Within Ukraine, the app saw over 50,000 downloads and more than 35,000 captures. It was covered in over 150 articles, and 6 NGOs and 7 international companies joined in to support it. It won the Grand Prix in the Digital Craft category at Cannes Lions 2022.
Afterthought
War doesn't just take lives—it takes a nation's pride and memory too. But even when buildings crumble into rubble, the data remains. Even when a statue shatters, the 3D model survives. What moved me most is that this wasn't made to win awards. It simply grew out of people asking themselves, "What can we actually do?"
Awards
- Cannes Lions Grand Prix 2022
