About ArtVenture

ArtVenture is a grant-making philanthropic organisation that seeks to harness the powers of the arts to improve the lives of people in the hardest communities of the world. By the virtues of the arts, we hope to help make our global community nobler and healthier in body, mind and soul.

Culture and the arts can transform the world. Human creativity and innovation have been central to our history and development as a civilisation. Art is an enabler, a universal language that can comfort, communicate and give counsel. Its media cut through all boundaries, be they economic, national or cultural. The arts empower people through the free expression of ideas, hopes, dreams and aspirations. It helps to create our future.

Our goal is to use the arts to alleviate suffering and provide opportunities to the world’s most neglected communities. The arts – painting and sculpture, music and dance, architecture and design, photography and film, drama and literature – become more than the Greek’s mimesis and catharsis, and surpass even Tolstoy’s belief that art unifies through feeling. For us, the living arts become tools of social empowerment. A civilisation can only advance if its sciences and arts are balanced.

We promote projects that foster and liberate creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship. Art is the manifestation of the creator within. A healthy culture and the life of artistic ideas contribute, in turn, to the development of enterprise and economic independence which are crucial to alleviating poverty and achieving prosperity.

We support artists and organisations that use the arts to highlight social development issues, build bridges between cultures and confront oppression, by affirming truth and community. This is art as the great communicator; without communication a society cannot find harmony.

We support projects that bring strength and comfort, healing and confidence to societies fractured by disease or conflict. Art can heal individuals and whole communities, it can counsel people who have suffered, and it can provide an outlet for past experiences. Projects using the arts in slums, prisons, communities with a high prevalence of HIV/AIDS, orphanages are all involved in a global healing process.

ArtVenture endeavours, through partnerships with grassroots projects and working with other creative donors, to bring a positive message of hope and joy to places of turmoil and despair. The arts is our place of business and also our spiritual home. We believe in art as creator, counselor and healer; art for communicating across divides. Art for art’s sake and therefore our own.