nuevos socios comanditarios

Nuevos Socios Comanditarios is a programme pioneered by the Fondation de France in 1991, with the aim of promoting a new form of public art: an art created in line with the common needs and wishes of society itself. It is represented by a group of people (the sleeping partners) who undertake to take part in a project to define these needs and to work alongside the artist in the creative process. Thus, Nuevos Socios Comanditarios propose a more democratic and participative definition of public art, more in line with the interests of those who are going to coexist with or make use of this. The art emerges from a specialised world and enters fields in which it does not usually exist, to study and enrich its cultural and social context.

Based on its success in France, the programme was expanded in 2000 to include Belgium and Italy, in 2008 to Germany and now has a number of projects underway in Great Britain, Sweden and Finland. At this time, it is also beginning in the Basque Country, promoted by Artehazia, Cultural, Arts and Society Association. The desire to spread throughout Europe is closely linked with its way of looking at the public or meeting space as a common place and art as a form of expression of that social organisation, at a time of great crisis for these values.

In the Basque Country, Nuevos Socios Comanditarios wish to revitalise the interactions between artists and people/groups who, beyond the organisations to which they belong, promote the search for new responses to social needs; transformations of environments and contexts in which artistic processes can contribute high added value.