Delfina Foundation launches its fundraising campaign ‘A Home for Artists’ to secure its future in cultivating artistic talent.
On October 6th 2024/Today, we launched a fundraising campaign to save our London home and build a future for Delfina and the artists it supports. The campaign, A Home for Artists, was launched with the support of Delfina alumni from across our history, including Sonia Boyce, Haegue Yang, Rana Begum, Farah Al Qasimi and Maxwell Alexandre. It highlights our role as the largest international artists residency programme in the UK and calls on the international philanthropic community to help us to save this extraordinary space and programme.
In 2022 our founder, Delfina Entrecanales, passed away. As founder, her support was visionary and unwavering, and following her passing we had to make a decision about the future of the Foundation. Her son, Charles Wansbrough, has provided a generous donation to kick start a fundraising campaign to allow us to buy the property, and safeguard this groundbreaking arts organisation.
We now need £7M to purchase and renovate our London home and continue to develop our creative programmes to support and inspire international practitioners and UK-based artists.
Aaron Cezar, Director of Delfina Foundation, said: “Delfina Foundation is a unique place which serves a vital role in the arts ecosystem. We provide unparalleled support to artists at a time when funding for the arts is increasingly precarious, and our commitment to bringing the best international talent to the UK is unwavering. So much of the work of an artist residency is invisible, but without Delfina, museums, galleries and audiences in the UK and around the world would not benefit from some of the most exciting art being made today. Since 2007, we have worked to create an extraordinary global community of artists, collectors and philanthropists, and now, through A Home for Artists, we are asking that community to help us save the Foundation for the future.”
Haegue Yang, who was in residence at Delfina Studios in 2004, and whose major survey show Leap Year opens at the Hayward Gallery on 9 October, said: “My time at Delfina was pivotal to my practice. Delfina nurtures artists during key stages of their development – it is not just a place, but a vital force in the artistic ecosystem, and it deserves our unwavering support.”