Creative Grants and Residencies,  News

Absolut Partners with The h. Club Foundation to support their Emerging Creatives Programme

Absolut is proud to partner with the London’s hub for the creative industries The Hospital Club and the h.Club Foundation  an independent charitable entity established to use the Club’s membership, staff and resources to invest back into both the creative industries and the local community. As part of the Foundation’s ‘Emerging Creatives Programme’, Absolut will support and nurture emerging talent from the art and design world.

The first spirit brand to forge genuinely close ties with the creative community, Absolut has been active in the art world since 1986, when it invited Andy Warhol to create the first in a series of iconic advertisements inspired by the Absolut bottle. Since then, Absolut has collaborated with more than 1000 artists on over 800 commissioned projects.

Absolut continue to grow their arts legacy by supporting and collaborating with the h.Club Foundation, working with up and coming designers Cindy Strobach and Mike Vanis who together run a creative partnership called Unit Lab. As part of the partnership, Mike and Cindy will be briefed to create a brand new piece of work based on the Absolut Nights programme  using art, music and technology to transform the night.

“Absolut has a long history of celebrating original thinking and artistic collaboration, always experimenting with new techniques and pushing boundaries to develop innovative and artistic products. Mike and Cindy’s work encapsulates this and we’re excited to see how they will respond to our brief and proud to support them on this journey,” says Rick Bennett Baggs, Senior Brand Manager, Absolut.

Together, the h.Club Foundation and Absolut will offer:

  • Membership to the Club for 1 year
  • A grant of up to £2,000 to develop the Absolut Nights brief
  • A comprehensive programme of development, coaching and mentoring
  • Access to the Club’s facilities
  • Opportunities to network with the Club’s diverse community of creative professionals and to showcase work via the Club’s on-line and off-line platforms

As part of the Emerging Creatives Programme, the h. Club Foundation will also support 3 additional creatives from the fields of Fashion, Theatre & Performance, Film & Video and Music. The Hospital Club provides its resources and space to the h.Club Foundation free of charge, ensuring that every penny donated goes directly to supporting the Foundation’s work.

“The ethos of the Club has always been clear: to support the creative industries and to nurture emerging talent. We are proud that the h.Club Foundation will be playing a part in enabling the next generation of creative innovators to make their mark in their respective fields, leading the way with vision, passion and inspiration,” says Sue Walter, CEO of the Hospital Club

 

About The Hospital Club

THE HOSPITAL CLUB is a unique private members club in the heart of Covent Garden, London, for members of the creative industries. It was founded by Dave Stewart, one half of the Eurhythmics, and Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft. The seven storey building has an award-winning TV and Music Studio, a Gallery, Restaurant and Bars, a Screening Room, Hotel Bedrooms, and the Oak Room, a live performance space.

 

Joanne Carter, creator of the world’s most popular mobile photography and art website— TheAppWhisperer.com— TheAppWhisperer platform has been a pivotal cyberspace for mobile artists of all abilities to learn about, to explore, to celebrate and to share mobile artworks. Joanne’s compassion, inclusivity, and humility are hallmarks in all that she does, and is particularly evident in the platform she has built. In her words, “We all have the potential to remove ourselves from the centre of any circle and to expand a sphere of compassion outward; to include everyone interested in mobile art, ensuring every artist is within reach”, she has said. Promotion of mobile artists and the art form as a primary medium in today’s art world, has become her life’s focus. She has presented lectures bolstering mobile artists and their art from as far away as the Museum of Art in Seoul, South Korea to closer to her home in the UK at Focus on Imaging. Her experience as a jurist for mobile art competitions includes: Portugal, Canada, US, S Korea, UK and Italy. And her travels pioneering the breadth of mobile art includes key events in: Frankfurt, Naples, Amalfi Coast, Paris, Brazil, London. Pioneering the world’s first mobile art online gallery - TheAppWhispererPrintSales.com has extended her reach even further, shipping from London, UK to clients in the US, Europe and The Far East to a global group of collectors looking for exclusive art to hang in their homes and offices. The online gallery specialises in prints for discerning collectors of unique, previously unseen signed limited edition art. Her journey towards becoming The App Whisperer, includes (but is not limited to) working for a paparazzi photo agency for several years and as a deputy editor for a photo print magazine. Her own freelance photographic journalistic work is also widely acclaimed. She has been published extensively both within the UK and the US in national and international titles. These include The Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, Popular Photography & Imaging, dpreview, NikonPro, Which? and more recently with the BBC as a Contributor, Columnist at Vogue Italia and Contributing Editor at LensCulture. Her professional photography has also been widely exhibited throughout Europe, including Italy, Portugal and the UK. She is currently writing several books, all related to mobile art and is always open to requests for new commissions for either writing or photography projects or a combination of both. Please contact her at: [email protected]