Chair statement
A challenge to prevailing views
The work of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation is driven by a strong desire to enable people to imagine and implement creative ways to realise their potential, to help the mover come injustice and prejudice and to give them an opportunity to play as full a part as possible in the communities in which they live.
Whilst good intentions are a necessary starting point, to make a difference in our main areas of work – the arts, education and learning, social justice – it is often important to challenge prevailing orthodoxies and back inspiring individuals and ground-breaking organisations who have different ways of thinking and working through sometimes quite familiar issues.
The spectrum of our support is very broad. It ranges from a close association with the Royal Opera House’s educational and community work (which we supported by endowing their Paul Hamlyn Education Fund), to The Roundhouse which enables children of diverse backgrounds to participate in the Roundhouse Studios programmes. Several hundred schools have embraced our work with Musical Futures and a major research project has involved detailed work with young undocumented migrants.
This year when I visited India I saw the impact of community-based partnership working by the organisations we fund there. This is leading to a greater empowerment of the most vulnerable members of poor communities, often women and children. In some parts of India traditional attitudes are deeply entrenched, but locally devised and locally owned ideas enable individuals to bring about changes which benefit whole communities and eventually may affect all members of society.
In all areas our endeavour is underpinned by our belief in giving people – often younger people or those who face particular barriers – the chance to have their voices heard and to have a greater control over their lives.
Youth participation will become explicit in Right Here, a new Mental Health special initiative which has been researched and developed over the past year. We have placed greater emphasis on encouraging young people to speak, and to listen. We are helping to create new kinds of educational practice which change the structure of formal education and which value informal education.
Our advantage is not only that we have a substantial endowment thanks to my father’s generosity, and an ethos which derives from his passionate belief in social justice and an equally strong dislike of privilege, but also that we are not answerable to short-term political imperatives or special interest groups. This relatively free hand gives us particular opportunities and brings special responsibilities.
David Price has led our initiative Musical Futures with great distinction for five years and continues his involvement alongside our National Co-ordinator for Muscial Futures, Abigail D’Amore. David is now helping us with our new initiative Learning Futures. We are delighted that his contribution over twenty years to music and education nationally was recently recognised by the honour of an OBE.
We are very grateful to our Finance and Investment Director, Jonathan Sheldon, who joined the Foundation in 2003 and has now moved to The Health Foundation. Jonathan’s advice and expertise have been hugely important to the Foundation and we thank him for all that he has done.
We are fortunate to have a talented and motivated team of staff, advisors and trustees led by a director with a burning passion to make a difference, and I would like to thank them all for their determination and belief in the aims we share, and for all they achieve.
Jane Hamlyn
Chair