Selected projects
Tönstör Music education projects
School projects
The Tönstör association offers fun and exciting activities for children and young people to learn about experimental, contemporary music and the music of other cultures. We promote listening, research and composing together.
British Refugee Council: My View
Conflict and violence
Many of the children referred to the service of My View are offered therapeutic support, either in one-to-one or group settings. It helps young people work towards managing symptoms such as nightmares, intrusive thoughts and anxiety.
Integration project ICRM
Conflict and violence
The Islington Centre for Refugees and Migrants (ICRM) offers psychosocial and practical support to destitute migrants. Many of them are traumatized as a result of conflict and violence. The London-based integration centre helps them to deal with their experiences and rebuild life in their new home.
Baobab Centre
Conflict and violence
The Baobab Centre supports young asylum seekers who have survived war and violence. Many of them are alone in exile and suffer from loneliness, uncertainty and a lack of opportunities for integration. Through individual psychotherapy and group activities they learn to cope with their past experiences and master daily life in their new country.
Mine Action Angola
Conflict and violence
Angola is the country with the third highest landmine density in the world. Specially trained rats provided by the NGO APOPO discover these mines without being harmed in the process. A special team then detonates the mines and gives the safe tracts of land the all-clear for cultivation – an important step in the long-term development of the country.
Arts Education Programme MUS-E®
School projects
MUS-E® is a programme that combines education and mediation in the arts. Its central concern is raising the social, cultural, emotional and physical awareness of school pupils in the context of a holistic approach to arts education.
In Place of War: Rise Above in Lavender Hill, Cape Flats
Music
For years, Place of War has been working internationally to ensure that marginalized communities have better access to art and culture. With the support of the Stanley Thomas Johnson Foundation, the new IPOW development project “Rise Above in Lavender Hill” in Cape Town in South Africa has been realized. A diverse cultural and social activity programme has been set up in the community of Lavender Hill, which is characterized by gang and drug violence and precarious living conditions. The programme enables young people safe access to activities like music workshops, dance classes and sports.
Psy4Asyl – For the mental health of refugees in the Canton of Aargau
Conflict and violence
Many refugees are traumatised by their experiences in their places of origin or during their escape, or affected by difficult circumstances and legal proceedings involved in migration. At the same time, hundreds of therapy placements for traumatised refugees are lacking. The expert network Psy4Asyl offers refugees in the Canton of Aargau psychological counselling and therapy, largely free of charge. To reach as many people as possible, the experts also offer group sessions for refugees and specialist training for professionals.
STEP UK: Syrian refugee support and child protection in Iraq
Conflict and violence
The Arbat refugee camp was established in 2013, when conflict in Syria escalated and many Syrians, fleeing the war, entered the Kurdish region of Iraq. STEP’s Child-friendly Spaces in the camp ensure refugee children are provided with education, child protection interventions and psychosocial support to help them process trauma and grief.
Fund for Global Human Rights: Supporting Rehabilitation and Access to Education in DRC
Conflict and violence
The Fund for Global Human Rights (FGHR) is supporting four local children’s rights partners and their work to reintegrate and provide education to children affected by conflict in North and South Kivu regions in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). To help push for systematic change, FGHR is also supporting a national coalition of NGOs in their efforts to develop and advocate for sustainable and innovative solutions to permanently end the use of child soldiers in the DRC and to ensure the proper reintegration and care of vulnerable children.
Biber the Kid: Theatre at Pro Natura Centre Eichholz
School projects
Thanks to the Stanley Thomas Johnson Foundation, 15 school classes from the Bern region attended an open-air theatre about beavers in May 2021. The project was part of the tenth anniversary of the Nature Centre by the Aare in Wabern and delighted over 300 children and their accompanying adults.
Concert Programme “New World”
School projects
In addition to its regular concert performances, the Youth Symphony Orchestra Biel (JSOB) also strives to promote contact between its members and young soloists as well as other youth orchestras. For the summer programme “New World”, the JSOB therefore joined forces with the youth orchestra of the Conservatoire de musique neuchâtelois (OJCN 2) to perform Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, also known as the “New World Symphony”.
Icon Poet School - It is only while at play that we are fully human!
School projects
A game that promotes language as a cultural asset and conveys the joy of writing, performing and listening. It intends to inspire creativity, spontaneity and interaction, and to explore possibilities of expression in a shared, playful approach to language.
Association JuRep 2.0
School projects
The JuRep 2.0 association trains young people between 7th and 9th grade as youth reporters. In a four-day course during the summer holidays, the participants gain comprehensive insight into the diversity of the digital and analogue media world. They receive a wide range of input on the production of multimedia content from trained experts. The results are presented to a wide audience on social media and the youth page of the Thuner Tagblatt newspaper.
Intergenerational Game «Build a Time Machine!»
School projects
The association Zeitmaschine.TV (timemachine.tv) is implementing an intergenerational game with school classes and other partners, which has led to around 1’000 oral history film clips produced so far – with the scenario adapted during the pandemic. Currently the game is being expanded, for example with analogue and digital games for old age institutions and curated thematic clip collections.
ROCK YOUR LIFE! - Developing Potentials
School projects
ROCK YOUR LIFE! (RYL!) is a one-to-one mentoring programme between young people and young mentors, to promote educational equality, equal opportunities and social mobility. Young people's educational and developmental opportunities depend strongly on their social background. Not all young people have an environment that can provide sufficient support in the process of vocational orientation and give them enough space to develop their potential. This is where RYL! comes in.
Clod Ensemble «The Black Saint and The Sinner Lady»
Dance
Clod Ensemble is a pioneering artist-led company based in London, founded by director Suzy Willson and composer Paul Clark. Over 25 years, Clod Ensemble has created an extraordinary body of artistic work that pushes the boundaries of choreographic, music & theatre practice. They engage audiences through finely crafted performance and participation projects; develop the next generation of artists through a rich programme of education & talent development.
Forever, Tabea Martin
Dance
What do kids think about life and death, dying and immortality? What do they imagine about life after death? Is it a taboo to talk to them about it? The ideas and fantasies of children from 8 to 12 years old are interpreted through interviews and workshops with five professional dancers.
The Ecstatic, Jeremy Nedd
Dance
For his dance piece The Ecstatic, the Basel-based choreographer Jeremy Nedd worked with six Pantsula dancers, taking inspiration from the rhythmic, energetic and expressive physical language of the South African dance form Pantsula.
Chro no lo gi cal, Art Mouvements
Dance
The dance project Chron o lo gi cal with dancers Ruth Childs, Yasmine Hugonnet and Audrey Gaison Doncel centres on perceptions of time, gesture and language as shared elements creating interpersonal connection.
Runway
Dance
The dance duo Delgado Fuchs regularly collaborates with artists from other fields. For their piece Runway they commissioned the hair artist Charlie Le Mindu and the musician Clive Jenkins to develop an investigation of hair as fetish, body ornament and ritual element.
Jazzwerkstatt Bern
Music
The Jazzwerkstatt is a festival that creates international connections. It focuses on collaboration and exchange between artists from all over the world, cross-genre projects and inclusion of the young Swiss scene.
Bern Music Festival Education Programme
Music
The Bern Music Festival integrates music education and cultural participation into its artistic concept from the beginning: curators and educators exchange ideas, reflect on the festival theme and programme and develop ideas together. Every year a range of educational programmes is developed in the form of transdisciplinary projects, courses, installations and initiatives.
guerillaclassics
Music
The association g-classics makes classical music with high quality performances accessible to a young and heterogenous public. It achieves this by organising inspiring and spontaneous concert experiences at unusual locations in public space.
It's the real thing - Basler Dokumentartage
Theatre
Every two years, the Basel documentary festival is dedicated to the documentary arts with a focus on the performing arts. Unique in Europe in its thematic focus, “It's The Real Thing” highlights the manifold ways in which reality and identities are portrayed in politics, the media, science, in stories, in joint discussions and in the arts.
Schlachthaus: theatre for young audiences
Theatre
Since its beginnings, the Schlachthaus Theater Bern has also been a theatre for young audiences – and demand remains high. The theatre plans to strengthen and develop its offerings for a young audience. It will be supported for several years to extend the range of its activities, including taking new productions into local neighbourhoods in order to reach a diverse audience of children and young people.
Heitere Fahne
Theatre
The Heitere Fahne is a young collective in Bern, which within a short time has succeeded in inspiring a substantial public to engage with culture in the most diverse and inclusive forms. Within the framework of a partnership, the further development of the business, which is located in a charming old brewery in Wabern, is to be supported long term.
Verein Treibsand
Visual art
Every six months, the curator Susann Wintsch presents new contemporary art projects in her online exhibition “Treibsand” (Quicksand). The project also introduces art from crisis-hit regions of the Arab world in innovative ways. Each exhibition focuses on a particular metropolis (Teheran, Istanbul, Palestine and Kabul, for example) and is put together in collaboration with local artists. Our foundation currently supports Treibsand in the preparation of the international group exhibition “The other Kabul” which develops visions for the culture of Afghanistan are designed. The exhibition will be presented in Kunstmuseum Thun in 2022.
BewegGrund
Dance
The BewegGrund association promotes inclusive dance, that is, people with and without disabilities dancing together. Since its foundation in 1998, the association has run regular courses and workshops, worked in schools and organised a festival every two years. The BewegGrund company prepares professional stage plays and performs them on international tours.
Orchesterpraktikum und Sommerkonzerte
Music
Every year, the Biel Solothurn Symphony Orchestra, in collaboration with the SON foundation, organises summer and seasonal internships for young musicians. This gives them an opportunity to rehearse with members of the Symphony Orchestra and work on chamber music projects, symphonic works, light classical and crossover music projects.
Appenzeller Bachtage
Music
At the Appenzell Bach Days, great Bach interpreters and academics come together to experience and discuss Bach with an interested public. The small festival deliberately breaks with conventions.
Medair: Somalia
Conflict and violence
As a response to pressing humanitarian needs for acute malnutrition treatment resulting from massive food insecurity and extensive population movements, this project provides essential nutrition services to Internally displaced persons as well as host communities in selected districts in Somalia. Cases of acute malnutrition will be treated and benefit from an extensive health and hygiene education programme.
NW Trilogy
Theatre
The current project consists of three parts and deals with the history of the immigrant movements in London in the Brent district, from the working conditions of Asian immigrants to the reggae movement and Irish migration.
Alone Together, Asphaltpiloten
Dance
«Alone Together» is a performance for an exhibition space. Precise movements, atmospheric sounds and a dynamic spatial concept stimulate the audience to think about digitization, social distancing and public space. «Alone Together» was premiered as a Swiss contribution at the Gwangju Biennale 2021 and then shown in Switzerland at the Center Pasquart in Biel and at the Haus der elektronischen Künste Basel in Basel.
Terra
Visual art
The Zürich artist Auréle Ferrier plans a video film to be produced in 2022 after a research trip to China. It will focus on things built and designed by people, on construction sites, urban canyons and streets – but the people themselves are missing. China becomes a testimony to global urban developments. The model-like imagery is repulsive and fascinating at the same time.
Stolen Moments
Visual art
The exhibition «Stolen Moments» in Photobastei Zürich is dedicated to the works of the photographer Daniel Compte who has been suffering from Alzheimer's disease since 2014. The exhibition sets a touching symbol against oblivion.
Real Feelings
Visual art
The international group exhibition «Real Feelings» deals with important current questions about artificial intelligence, machines, technologies and emotions. Emotions lie at the core of human experience, which is why it seems all the more important to look at new technologies under this focus.
Bodies in motion - dance and contemporary art
Visual art
The project curated by Olivier Kaeser in Le Commun, a 700 m2 hall in Geneva’s Bâtiment d’art contemporain, brings together dance and contemporary art from the last 20 years together with site-specific installations in an inspiring way.
Christine Streuli, Musée des beaux-arts de Thoune
Visual art
The renowned Swiss painter Christine Streuli has created a kind of retrospective at the Kunstmuseum Thun in the form of a wallpaper with photographic reproductions of earlier works from the past 15 years. This creates an exciting dialogue between painted pictures and reproduced painting.
Julian Charrière, “Towards No Earthly Pole”
Visual art
The exhibition “Towards No Earthly Pole” by the Swiss artist Julian Carrière in the Museo d'arte della Svizzera italiana in Lugano shows, among other things, a new film production by Charriere. The artist moves in an innovative way in the research field of his former teacher Olafur Eliasson and combines environmental issues with poetic images and new techniques and materials.
Alpentöne 2021 Internationales Musikfestival
Music
The “Alpentöne” festival in Altdorf looks for the roots and the future of alpine music. It combines old and new folk music, tradition and innovation, authenticity and experiment.
Rohre, studio-klangraum
Music
The project emerged from the Basel music-architecture festival "Zeiträume", which the Stanley Thomas Johnson Foundation supported several times. 6 composers, 5 musicians, 2 architects and 1 stage builder create a sounding room out of pipes. The remarkable pavilion becomes a “musical instrument” for which special works are composed. Performances took place in Basel, Zurich and Lausanne with concerts and installations. A book project is planned to conclude the series in 2025.
Theatre at home – a Webseite by Swiss dance and theatre artists for children amd families
Culture Extra
The website offers a new form of communication between dance and theater professionals and children (6+ years) and families. The contributions follow a dialogical approach and encourage the viewers to become creative. No dance and theater productions are recorded, but instead theatrical techniques are conveyed, and special glimpses behind the scenes of theatre and dance are given. The website can also be used in school lessons.
https://theaterfuerzuhause.ch/
Ensemble Contrechamps “Duets for one”
Culture Extra
Five audio and video recordings in which musicians play as soloists, but have a double role, or interact with an invisible electronic alter-ego or a second version of themselves. It is a way to explore musical communication and musicianship in the context of a general confinement. Works will be recorded in high definition audio for release, and as conceptual videos highlighting
Dialogue de l'Ombre Double, SIBJA Kollektiv et Teresa Rotemberg
Culture Extra
The young artist duo SIBJA Kolllektiv and the renowned choreographer Teresa Rotemberg have dealt with the relationships between video, dance and contemporary music. A short film was made that refers to Pierre Boulez's “Dialogue de L'ombre Double”. The film is shown at several dance festivals.
Living-room dancers, online archive
Culture Extra
The choreographer Nicole Seiler started the program "Living-room Dancers" with amateur dancers from all over the world, which is constantly evolving in new places. In the form of a city tour, the dancers can be observed from the street in their private rooms with the help of MP3 players and binoculars. In addition, the filmed dance scenes are transferred simultaneously to video installations in exhibition rooms. The films showing the dancers behind their windows as well as filmed interviews with the dancers are available online.