The Fondation Sommer is a private grant-making foundation, established under Luxembourg law, with official charitable status. Created in 2016 by Pierre Brahms and governed by the articles and law of the 21st April, 1928, the foundation’s purpose is to support the empowerment of children and young people in Luxembourg, through the arts and culture.

The founder’s philosophy

Pierre Brahms philosophy was to financially and/or materially support young talents. Following on from this, the foundation aims to develop a framework to allow collaboration between artists and educators who are working for the personal development of children and young people.

The arts and culture are considered as a means for building an open-minded society and for ensuring that it remains this way, as well as a shared creative process based on aesthetic experience and also as a liberating form of self-learning. Children and young people who participate in these types of interdisciplinary cultural initiatives see their self-confidence increase and their minds open up and be set free, the essential conditions for empowerment.

The Fondation Sommer promotes innovative approaches that can meet this aim. On one hand, the foundation encourages the initiatives of different actors in this sector which strive to allow young people to participate in creative, exploratory or discursive processes. On the other hand, the foundation works with other structures in order to help them to strengthen their own capacities for achieving this objective. The foundation’s ultimate goal is to drive change within the cultural ecosystem so that children and young people can evolve in a society that is more open-minded and more respectful towards people and communities.

How does the foundation work?

Every year the Fondation Sommer supports a number of different participatory projects which use the arts and culture as emancipatory tools and engage with children and/or young people, as well as their families. In order to do this, the foundation has put into place 4 calls for projects per year. Artists, not-for-profit associations (ASBLs) and institutions can all submit projects, either on their own or working jointly, according to 3 different modalities:

• Educational projects
  “To allow each individual to take active control over the direction of their own life”

The Fondation Sommer supports educational activities aimed at young people (aged 3 to 20), as part of an artistic or cultural creation project that enables children and young people to question, create and experience empowerment.

A maximum financial grant of 7,000€ will be awarded per project.

• Joint Cultural projects
  “To imagine new forms of cooperation in the domain of cultural and artistic education”

The Fondation Sommer supports actions that bring together two entities that carry out different activities, in the case when an exchange of competencies between these entities could bring new dynamics and expertise to cultural, education and social sectors which are working for the empowerment of young people.

Projects must be submitted jointly by two organisations and at least one of these must be a cultural structure.

A maximum financial grant of 10,000€ will be awarded per project.

• Joint Intercultural projects
  “To build bridges between cultures”

The foundation aims to use its support to foster relations between the different cultures that are present in Luxembourg and, in this way, to favour the social inclusion of young people and their families through the means of culture.

Projects must be submitted jointly by two organisations and at least one of these must be a cultural structure.

A maximum financial grant of 10,000€ will be awarded per project.

>> View the calls for projects

The foundation also has the ambition of playing a leading role on the cultural scene. For the foundation it is extremely important to introduce new ideas and ways of doing things so that more initiatives encourage children and young people to undertake artistic experimentation. This is because the foundation believes that bringing young people closer to art as a discipline, a vector for values and also a means for self-exploration and self-expression, should be an objective that is shared by more people who work in educational, cultural and social sectors.

The foundation therefore also considers itself as a bridge between stakeholders that can bring new dynamics to these domains. In 2021, the foundation started to bring people together by organising an on-line roundtable event which involved a number of foundations which work within a similar field of action. This roundtable allowed participants to present themselves, lay the foundations for the creation of a network and discuss, in particular, the challenges involved in evaluating the impact of projects.

Further projects are under discussion at the moment. The foundation is currently in a ‘listening’ phase, which includes meetings and undertaking consultations in order to define its main lines of action for the coming years.

Who was Pierre Brahms?

Born in 1934, Pierre Brahms was a leading figure in the city of Luxembourg, right up until his death in 2019.

His childhood was happy but marked by the fragility of life, his family had to emigrate to Brazil in order to avoid deportation. Following on from his early years, he maintained an unwavering interest in other people, a thirst for culture and a strong desire to bring people from different horizons together. He had a passion for creating spaces for exchanges, kindling synergies and allowing others to shape the paths of their own lives.

He very quickly made a name for himself as much for his entrepreneurial spirit as for his appetite for supporting young people in their professional, artistic or intellectual projects.

In the 60s, he became well-known for transforming a former haberdashery, the Maison Moderne, into a trend-setting and original fashion boutique that spread out over several floors. Incredible and unforgettable, this store was a well-established address right up until it closed at the start of the 90s.

At this point, Pierre Brahms took over a courtyard in the neighbourhood of Hollerich where he opened the legendary Marx café. This was a venue that very quickly became a meeting point for artists, intellectuals and left-wing politicians.

Even after he retired, Pierre Brahms continued to receive people from different and varied walks of life at the weekly meetings which he organised in his office. Curious and generous, he became a philanthropist and discreetly supported many artists, entrepreneurs and intellectuals, both logistically and financially.

As he grew older, he was keen to find a way to ensure that his commitment to these areas could continue and this led him to create two foundations. The Fondation Été, which comes under the umbrella of the Fondation de Luxembourg, aims to give a helping hand to social, cultural and educational initiatives that are of general benefit to the public. The Fondation Sommer, the second foundation, is independent and has a fixed lifespan of 35 years. Through this foundation, Pierre Brahms desired to carry out work that could strengthen the abilities of young people in order to allow them to develop and achieve self-fulfilment through their own efforts. The names of these two foundations both come from the surname of their founder’s mother, Irène Sommer. Sommer is used directly in the name of the second foundation and indirectly in the former, as “Été” is the French translation of its English equivalent, “Summer”.

Many ideas would fly during the board of directors’ meetings. The first project, named Biergerbühn, was selected in 2017. Through this participatory project, the Independent Little Lies ASBL collective created a space where children and young people could discover and use their creativity to develop a theatre performance that mirrored their vision of the world. During weekly workshops at the Esch Kulturfabrik, run by theatre and dance teachers, actors, writers and set designers, young people were able to discover different practices and techniques linked to theatre arts and become authors themselves. This initiative is still running today, thanks to the support of the city of Esch-sur-Alzette.

The Fondation Sommer also directly initiated a collaboration with the CAPE (Centre des Arts Pluriels de Ettelbruck) during spring 2019 which will result in the TEMPLE project. Sadly, Pierre Brahms passed away in November 2019 and so was not able to see the outcome of this project. However, there is no doubt that he would have been extremely happy with the experiences that the young people involved in this project have had, experiences which have given them a means to excel and express themselves. He would surely also have greatly appreciated the thought process which has led the institution to consider recruiting a person who will be partly responsible for cultural mediation.

“[…] The whole of Luxembourg weeps for a man who was both discreet and generous, who had a curious mind and who gave unfailing support to generations of creative people, social projects and his political party, the LSAP. Although one might have thought that his career as a passionate shop owner in the capital would have led him to be involved with the Liberal party, he was left-wing by conviction: because he saw education, in particular, to be the social elevator that no one else seems to believe in anymore; he dreamt of social cohesion and the inclusion of the weakest in society; and he was resolutely progressive.” Josée Hansen, d’Lëtzebuerger Land, 8th November 2019 (original article in French).

This is how Pierre Brahms wanted to contribute towards the personal development of young people, after having spent a significant part of his life in contact with them, discussing, sharing and supporting their ideas, initiatives and innovations.

The foundation’s current team is committed to continuing this work by giving even greater scope to his actions through the structuring of the foundation and the development of its activities.