Welcome to Charity!
About us
The Sovereign Art Foundation (SAF) is a charitable organisation that was founded in 2003 with a well-defined twin focus: to recognise contemporary art talent around the world and bring the proven benefits of expressive arts to disadvantaged children.
SAF runs The Sovereign Asian Art Prize, now recognised as the most established and prestigious annual art award in Asia-Pacific. The Prize increases the international exposure of artists in the region, whilst raising funds by auctioning shortlisted artworks and sharing proceeds equally between the participating artists and SAF. SAF uses these proceeds to fund programmes that support disadvantaged children using expressive arts. This model has so far raised over US$9 million for artists and charities worldwide.
In 2013, SAF launched Make It Better (MIB), an initiative that supports children from low-income backgrounds and with special educational needs in Hong Kong. Find out more about the charity projects SAF runs here.
Mission
The mission of The Sovereign Art Foundation is twin-fold: to recognise and help promote contemporary art talent around the world and to bring the proven benefits of expressive arts to disadvantaged children.
Objective
The primary objective of The Sovereign Art Foundation is to raise funds to be used to help disadvantaged children through its various charity programmes.
Our Story
In 2003 Howard Bilton, Yorkshire-born art collector and Chairman of The Sovereign Group, devised a plan to build a Foundation in Hong Kong that used art to fund and promote art programmes. The aim was not only to elevate the profiles of mid-career contemporary artists; but also help disadvantaged children living in Asia. To this end, Howard established The Sovereign Art Foundation (SAF) and consequently, The Sovereign Asian Art Prize.
“I want to put the best of Asian art in front of the Hong Kong public so that they can appreciate art for art’s sake, whilst at the same time – and most importantly for me personally – raise money, which can be used to assist disadvantaged children.
My motivation has always been philanthropic, but we realise that if we want to raise a significant amount of money, we have to produce a world class art prize that attracts the very best artists. So, for The Sovereign Asian Art Prize, we offer a substantial prize fund and a platform which gives artists international exposure to new audiences around the region.”
Howard Bilton
