Our biggest moments in 2023

We’ve had an incredible journey over 2023, which was our second full year in operation.

Providing direct funding to artists is at the heart of our mission. We awarded six Impact Grants of €50,000 each to artist-led non-profits and ten Creative Bursaries of €10,000 each to emerging artists with socially engaged practices, totaling €400,000. If you’d like to learn a little more about these incredible people, you can do so here.

Our efforts to learn from our grantees and improve our processes took a step forward. This saw us launch our very first grantee survey—you can read about our findings, but in short, we believe trust-based philanthropy is the most  effective way to tackle the precarity that artists experience. 

One of our goals as we move into the next year is to foster a more nurturing community around the Foundation. Already we’re using our platform to increase awareness about our grantees, such as sharing their stories on our social media channels and inviting them to participate in our programme juries. And that will continue and expand over the coming years.

What comes next? 

In 2024, we’ve doubled both the total amount of funding distributed, and the number of our grants. 

We wouldn’t be able to do any of this without the generosity of WeTransfer—and that is made possible by everyone who uses the platform. “If you’ve used WeTransfer,” Damian Bradfield, the WeTransfer Chief Creative and Sustainability Officer and our Chair explained in the annual report, “you’ve helped to make this happen, so thank you too.”

Our mission continues as ever, and increasingly looks to expand what we can do for our grantees, whether that’s building their networks or convincing other institutions to adopt more artist-friendly policies.

And behind the scenes, the process to create our next plan for 2025–2027 has begun. It’s an important next step for us, and is a welcome change to review how we work. We’re looking forward to sharing our future direction with you.

Download the 2023 Annual Report