France
The Rubis Mécénat endowment fund, created by Rubis in 2011, carries out committed artistic and social projects. Their aim is to promote contemporary creation, support emerging artists, and empower disadvantaged youth through art.
Since its inception, Rubis Mécénat has been committed to highlighting contemporary creation —both exacting and democratic— by providing produc- tion assistance to emerging and mid-career artists to create new work. The resulting artworks are exhibited in France, in partnership with public-oriented cultural institutions and events.
Aware of the importance of emerging and new creative voices, as well as unequal access to an artistic career, the fund also supports emerging artists through several professionalisation and awareness-raising programmes. This includes the Rubis Mécénat Prize with Beaux-Arts de Paris, as well as support for the Young Creation workshop led by the Ateliers Médicis and the associated Young Creation Grant.
Moreover, Rubis Mécénat—driven by its conviction in the social role of art— develops artistic and cultural education projects in some countries where Rubis operates. Their goal is to empower disadvantaged youth and contribute sustainably to their training and integration by using artistic practice as a means of emancipation and positive engagement. In 2012, Rubis Mécénat established Of Soul and Joy, its first project centered on photography in the township of Thokoza, in Johannesburg, South Africa. The fund then developed InPulse, a project around visual arts, in Kingston, Jamaica. Most recently, in 2018, it created the Ndao Hanavao laboratory around social design in Anta- nanarivo, Madagascar.
The ensemble of these actions meets Rubis Mécénat’s desire to promote contemporary creation in all its diversity, encouraging transmission and exchange while creating the essential conditions for new artistic forms and discourses to emerge.