Ove Arup Foundation

Foundation announces latest successful grant applications

In addition to the major national and international initiatives to which The Ove Arup Foundation contributes significant sums of financial aid, we continue to provide support to a wide range of ventures initiated by others to whose success smaller sums granted by us also promise to be significant.

At their latest quarterly meeting, Trustees made a number of grants to applicant organisations. Two of those organisations are well known to the Foundation, having being supported already for a number of years; two are new to us.

Trustees agreed to continue support of the Foundation's scholarship scheme administered by the Anglo-Danish Society, which assists Danish students to come to the UK, or UK students to go to Denmark, for the purpose of advanced or postgraduate studies in a subject area relating to the built environment.

Another well-established recipient of Foundation grant support is the Lighting Education Trust, which has as its heart the aim of maintaining and promoting the MSc in Lighting run by London's Bartlett School of Architecture.

You can read more about the Foundation's support of the Anglo-Danish Society here, and of the Lighting Education Trust here.

The Trustees have also agreed to make a contribution to the Royal Academy of Art's major exhibition on the work of Andrea Palladio, the 16th century genius who occupies a pivotal place in the development of architecture in the West. The exhibition runs in London from 24 January 2009.

But the largest financial contribution agreed by the Trustees at their meeting - £6,000 - is to an Australian initiative aimed at benefiting the 120,000 people living in poverty in the township of Diepsloot, near Johannesburg, RSA. The University of Sydney, in collaboration with the University of Witwatersrand and the City of Johannesburg, is seeking to build on their Global Studio project last year. Several dozen built environment students, along with project associates and mentors and South African presenters, have been in Johannesburg for a symposium leading into two weeks of practical help in developing local capacity.

Central to the Global Studio concept is a community-based action and research agenda with the aim of improving the lives of people in disadvantaged communities through building capability and enabling change. There is also an overall intention to develop a national and international network of students, professionals and academics whose knowledge and experience can be deployed elsewhere.