365 days full of transformation for change

2019 has been a year of great activity for the Foundation due to both our calls for proposals and the development of the research and publications we support, as well as the collection of learnings from the initiatives we carry out, as part of our methodology to continue growing, improving and sharing.

The Tree of Life is the image with which we wish the holidays this Christmas. It sinks its roots and takes hold in the ground as its branches become tangled, dream, and soar looking beyond. Heaven and earth, past and future, strength and capacity, creation and transformation. This is how we have been growing since our birth almost ten years ago in France and five in Spain. And so we will continue to support, accompany or connect organizations and people who dare to look at and build a more sustainable and just world.

Building a paradigm shift collectively

This year we have also continued to sow and support new transformative projects from our two lines of action. The twelve new initiatives selected in the calls Shared Workshops for a Sustainable Food System in Sustainable Food and Composing Knowledge to Understand Contemporary Challenges in Citizen Art, join the more than 180 that we already support and that, as always, have had exceptional juries .

In addition to presenting and starting to accompany the 12 projects of the 2019 Calls, we have participated in and promoted 29 initiatives in Sustainable Food, Citizen Art and Philanthropy. In total, we have allocated 2,182,110 euros during the current year, which adds up to 15,914,000 euros since we started our activity in Spain in 2014.

Deepening the food transition

We understand Sustainable Food as democratic, supportive and agroecological, with a global approach, since the ecological, economic, social and nutritional impacts of food, from production to consumption, are interdependent. To deepen this transition towards sustainable food, it is necessary to act with all economic, social and economic actors, and at different levels simultaneously (consumers, producers, companies…).

With the aim of continuing to promote a systemic vision of food, we have developed different projects during 2019. In our Sustainable Food line, where the mobilizations for the emptied Spain have been very topical, we wanted to make visible, even more, how our collaborators dignify and revitalize the rural environment with their initiatives.

We have also continued to deepen the shared knowledge by collecting learnings from the projects we support to disseminate them, expand their radius of action and make their practices viral. Among the publications and research that we encourage and promote, we have made available to you the Carasso Notebooks of Territorialized Food Systems (SAT), a compilation of experiences from twenty-two projects in France and Spain to guide the transition that helps us walk together towards a new, more sustainable paradigm.

Together with CERAI we have published ‘Territorialized Food Systems. 100 Local initiatives for responsible and sustainable food’, a source of information, inspiration and action.

In addition, most of the reports that the independent panel of experts on Sustainable Food, IPES-Food, has produced since 2015, have been translated into Spanish, shaping the debate on the reform of the global food system through scientific reports and detailed policy recommendations that can already be implemented.

Advancing Cultural Democracy and Learning Connection

We believe in art as a critical activity that generates new imaginaries, essential aspects to reinvent our ways of life and thought, both individual and collective. For this reason, we remain convinced that art is a tool for research and research that will help us as a society to overcome the systemic crises that mark our time to promote mobilization and the creation of alliances between art, science and society to imagine the tomorrow we want.

From our Citizen Art line we have promoted expanded art education together with MACBA with the event ‘Allez! Itinerant practices and dispersed museums’, a meeting point for 34 artistic education and cultural mediation projects, two vital areas of action for the development of a true cultural democracy in society.

Also together with the Invisible Pedagogies collective, and other collaborators, we have presented the study ‘Foto Fija: situación de la mediación cultural en el Estado español 2018-2019‘. And we publicly present a project whose birth we have been accompanying for several years: Concomitentes, an association of mediators dedicated to working with citizens on artistic commissions committed to the realities they live.

In addition, we have shared our learnings from art, science and society, publishing the proceedings of Componer Saberes to understand contemporary challenges, since this work is a fundamental part of our methodology to expand our transformative mission even more.

Investments with real impact

In both France and Spain, we are developing a strategy of “impact investing” in for-profit or non-profit entities. In collaboration with the Quadia office, we created a fund dedicated to Sustainable Food in France and Spain, a line from which we are supporting the social enterprise Farmidable, which distributes organic, local and seasonal products in Madrid, in Spain. In addition, the participation in the capital of ARTE Education is the first impact investment we have made within the framework of our Citizen Art line, of which we are very proud.

An increasingly close horizon of change

For all this and much more, it is time to reap the fruits, also to continue sowing while we look to the future with confidence for the work done. The year we say goodbye will welcome 2020, the year in which we will celebrate our 10th Anniversary in France and which will come with a lot of activity not only there, but also in Spain. We will have a new edition of the 2020 Calls for Proposals on Sustainable Food and Citizen Art, we will promote the Spanish Philanthropic Coalition against the climate emergency, we will launch a Think Tank on sustainable food and we will launch an art education network in schools and institutes.

It will be a moment of reflection, of proudly observing the path traveled to continue projecting ourselves into the next decade with even more determination and enthusiasm, because the Tree of Life continues to grow, adding new branches, new fruits and new connections. We invite you to continue accompanying us on this exciting path of life, learning and transformative action.

Very happy 2020!

1) Sustainable Food: it is a healthy and sustainable diet, respectful of people and ecosystems, promoting new ways of thinking about “food” so that it contributes to the fullness of the human being and to create more harmonious living conditions. At the Foundation we believe that Sustainable Food must be democratic, supportive and agroecological.
2) Citizen Art: it is an art that brings together disciplines for social transformation, applying a view that promotes a more tolerant world, a fuller life and a project for the future sensitive to the needs of human beings and the fragility of the environment, promoting democracy and appealing to social and environmental responsibility.