Cellura & Onghena Foundation

The Cellura & Onghena Foundation, initiated in 2011 by Luciano Cellura and Olivier A. Onghena-’t Hooft, was born out of the life engagement of its two founding (and life) partners to substantially contribute to society and the world.

The Cellura & Onghena Foundation believes that through creation and through artistic expression (whatever the form !), young people and young talents become skilful in connecting to and expressing their potential. And these people will in a later stage in their life help society and the world become a better, more tolerant and more interesting place.

The Cellura & Onghena Foundation focuses on two objectives: help children realize their artistic dreams and talents; support young artists and designers to further develop their artistic talents.

In concrete terms :
We help young children get the right support to realize their artistic dream : by getting the music instrument they need, paying the tuition for the theatre, ballet or music classes, letting them participate in the courses and workshops that they would not have been able to access,… We will collaborate with schools, with youth movements, with local initiatives,…

We help young artists and designers with the right space, means, material and time to further explore their talent and go deeper in experimenting with their way of artistic expression(s). We will host residential exchanges in order for them to meet artists and designers from different countries, origins and specialties. We will foresee state of the art studio’s and experiential locations, where they can further explore and discover. We will invite renowned teachers, professors, practitioners and references to give master classes which they can attend.

The ultimate goal is that the Cellura & Onghena Foundation, which we want to become a foundation of public utility as it is called in Belgian law, becomes financially independent and gets the sufficient financial means to continue to grow, even when the founders have long passed away (leaving their inheritance to the foundation). We see this foundation as our ’life work’ and will take care that during the coming decades, and way beyond (!), a huge number of children, artists and designers can benefit from the foundation’s objectives.