Arts and Culture engender enthusiasm and enjoyment of life. To be creative and innovative is an important aspect of our social life. Henkel supports cultural events that have a great impact in the local community or region. Furthermore, we focus on projects to support creativity in general – especially among young people – and support young artists who are not well-known yet.

In many cases arts and culture also serve as tools to address the needs of children and to show them new perspectives. We want to strengthen therapies and projects that aim to think in alternatives by testing out different possibilities and creative ways to solve problems. Innovation and creativity is nothing you learn at school. Just as our Henkel employees do it in their daily work life: Try it out, be creative and encourage other people!

The Henkel volunteering group in Brazil has been active since 2000. It supports and organizes cultural activities at schools that are located close to the industrial units, the entities being indicated by the employees. The group promotes several campaigns every year in order to raise funds for cultural activities and provide badly needed materials to various Brazilian schools. In 2005 alone, the Henkel Volunteering Group has performed a great number of campaigns with significant success. There was, for example, a Donation Campaign of books, magazines and educational videos for children, or the Easter Campaign with a successful fund raising. In the Humboldt School in Interlagos a play named “O Menino e o Macaco” was set up and chrismas parties for schools were organized.

German Boy and Girl Scouts from the city of Neuss-Weckhoven were given the possibility to spend their summer camp in St. Paul, Minnesota, U.S.A. For three weeks children and teenagers aged 11 to 18 traveled through Minnesota. They were received with great hospitality and experienced the local culture and way of life. Among many other activities, the German boys and girls visited a baseball game, went on the Mississipi on a paddle steamer and met the mayor of St. Paul and, of course, the local Boy and Girl Scouts. Many of the participating German boys and girls could not have made the journey without the financial help of the Henkel MIT Initiative, which gave them the unique possibility to travel to a far away country and broaden their horizon.

The Korkut Evirgen Primary School in Istanbul, Turkey, had no financial means to offer any cultural activities to the children. Henkel employee Ahmet Cevik took charge of the problem and raised funds through the Henkel MIT Initiative. The 550 students of the primary school now have a theater stage and a little library. Two months after the inauguration the children had put on their first traditional dances and theatre plays.

In Slovakia, Henkel supports various projects in coordination with the foundation Jednota COOP that aim at offering interesting, artistic and educational leisure time activities for children. The little artists receive the opportunity to try many different creative and artistic activities, such as photography, painting, pottery, creative writing and many more. As often as possible, experts in fine arts work with the children.

Around 100 children, including some with physical or mental disabilities, participated in the musical “Peter Pan” as part of the “Chicken Shed” theatre group in London during the Christmas holiday period. For spectators young and old, each performance was a fascinating experience, as Chicken Shed not only managed to combine the talents, but also the special individualities of the young players within a harmonious and moving performance.
For example, elements of sign language were charmingly woven into the dance scenes. And there was also a “signer” accompanying the spoken dialogs. Having seen these magical scenes, Lorena McDean, an employee at Henkel Limited and one of the volunteers supporting Chicken Shed, was truly proud of her employer. It was due to a generous donation from Henkel Limited that the permanent ensemble and theatre students were able to take part in an intensive sign language training course.

South Warren, Michigan, U.S.A., is not a particularly good area for children. The people are poor, and violence and drugs are part of everyday life. Not so, however, in the Safari Club of the Gospel Lighthouse Church. Here, the children from South Warren meet every Wednesday evening. A team of volunteers including Yasmin Michalowicz, process engineer at Henkel Technologies Production in Warren, and her husband take care of the young club visitors. What concerns the carers of the Safari Club is that the children learn the difference between right and wrong. “We look at a different issue every week, and familiarize the children with it through games, sketches, puppet theater, songs and films,” reports Yasmin. When the Safari Club wanted to replace its completely obsolete lighting and sound system last year, the Henkel MIT Initiative provided the necessary money.

What does a theater director do? How do actors learn their lines? How do makeup artists make wrinkles and frown lines disappear to create young faces, and how does the wardrobe manager manage to find the right change of costume for each actor? These and thousands of other questions were posed by a group of children who were allowed a day’s visit behind the scenes at Prague’s National Theater. The youngsters were even allowed into the president’s box during the tour. Then, late in the evening, they also met the actors after their last performance of the day. For the children, all of whom live in orphanages, it was a very special treat. “One day...in the theater” was made possible for them by Henkel CR in cooperation with the Tereza Maxová Foundation, and naturally also the National Theater. Henkel CR has organized a number of events for children from orphanages in the past and will continue to do so into the future. The first of these came in 2003 with “One day...at the hairdressers”. On this occasion, the prize-winning star stylist Libor Šula provided the children with an insight into the art and finesse of his craft.