Green Art Lab Alliance Support Foundation

Green Art Lab Alliance Support (galas) is the legal entity behind gala. We are a non-profit organization that supports the Alliance’s operation from financial, legal and strategic perspective. This includes fundraising and making connections with other disciplines. Join forces with us by making a financial donation or contribute with knowledge and skills in your field.

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The Green Art Lab Alliance (gala) is an informal knowledge alliance of art organizations seeking to connect with each other over issues of climate justice  and environmental sustainability through their creative practice.  It started as an EU-funded project in 2012 and today networks institutions in Europe, Asia and Latin-America.

gala has not been formalized in order to retain flexibility in our ways of working and approach in our collaborations. Yet there was a need for a supportive legal entity. And so we decided to establish Green Art Lab Alliance Support (galas) in 2021. Our policy plan can be downloaded here.

galas functions as the legal entity that supports the Alliance’s operation from financial, legal and strategic perspective. It is a foundation (formally a ‘Stichting’) registered in the Netherlands, under KvK number 81248520. Our RSIN number is: 862015923. We have an account with the Triodos Bank number: NL48TRIO0320336921. With its legal status, it can help gala to fundraise and manage the fund and offer strategic advices to its activities and economy. You can contact galas by sending an email to its formal director Yasmine Ostendorf, on yasmine@greenartlaballiance.com. Our postal address is: Barcelonaplein 7, 1019 LX Amsterdam, the Netherlands. We have a registered ANBI status with the Dutch tax office, which means all donations are tax deductible.

The types of projects galas engages with are those in partnership with art organizations, science institutions, educational initiatives, activist movements, communities and other socially and environmentally engaged groups, movements and institutions and that are in pursuit of social and environmental justice. They include research, presentations, mappings, lectures, publications, workshops, seminars and exhibitions, residencies and staff-exchanges – amongst others.

The Foundation does not aim to make a profit and aims at the public interest. Therefore there is no financial renumeration for the Board nor the Director for the running of galas. This work is all done on a voluntary base.

galas consists of three board members and a director, following the required legal structure for a ‘Stichting’ in the Netherlands. They collectively and collaboratively decide on how and which projects to support or initiate and work closely and in agreement with the partners in the Green Art Lab Alliance.

BOARD

Katelijn Verstraete (Belgium/ Singapore) is a cultural consultant with over 25 years of experience in strategy development, planning, implementation and evaluation of arts and cultural relations programs across Asia and Europe. During her work at the Asia-Europe Foundation and as Director Arts British Council East Asia she enabled dialogues, exchanges, skills development, research, and policy initiatives aimed at fostering trust and connections between people and strengthening the creative sector. At ASEF set set up the Connect2Culture (2008-2011) which explored connections between the arts, culture and global environmental issues through the lense of artists, arts professionals and policy makers. As a result of the programme, in 2011 ASEF launched the Connect2Culture dossier: Arts. Environment. Sustainability. How can Culture Make a Difference? at the ASEF-supported roundtable at the 5th World Summit on Arts and Culture in Melbourne, Australia.  At the British Council, Katelijn actively promoted awareness around sustainabilty, through expert contributions in Asia (e.g. Julies Bicycle) or programmes such as Hubs for Good and the Crafing Futures programmes. British Council was part of the start of the Green Art Lab Alliance Asia chapter meeting. 
 In 2021 Katelijn set up ReflAction Works offering strategic consultancy, research (e.g. The Fair Collaboration Toolkit) and evaluations to arts organisations, international relations organisations, foundations, networks in Asia and Europe. Passionate about better and fairer systems to capture intrinsic and transversal impact of arts and culture she joined the Cultural Development Network in 2023 as associate to grow the Takso, the outcomes based planning system internationally which also captures ecological impact of cultural activities.
In her free time, Katelijn is passionate about connecting with the energy of trees and doing urban gardening.
Binna Choi is the director at Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons in Utrecht, where she engages with both its artistic program and the organizational and (de)instituting practice as her curatorial and collective art practice. Travelling Farm Museum of Forgotten Skills with the Outsiders, Site for Unlearning (Art Organization) with Annette Krauss and the Casco team, Unmapping Eurasia with You Mi are some of her recent or ongoing curatorial projects, next to the process of restructuring and rearticulating the institution itself with the Casco team, the annual Assembly for commoning art institutions (since 2018) and other infrastructural projects under development. Besides, Choi is the member of Akademie der Künste der Welt / Köln where in 2020 she in close collaboration with Christian Nyampeta curated Gwangju Lessons over the 18 May Democratic Uprising and took it to Asia Culture Center as part of the MaytoDay project by the Gwangju Biennale Foundation. In 2016, she was a curator for the 11th Gwangju Biennale. She also has been serving as an advisor to the Afield network, MARCH journal and Sinan archipelago county’s island cultural diversity network program. Binna is the secretary of the Foundation.
Maria Tuerlings is the founder of TransArtists, a platform stimulating and strengthening artists’ mobility internationally. She started TransArtists in 1997 aiming to support artists accessing residency opportunities worldwide. Maria participated in many artists residency networks, was Secretary of the Board of Res Artis (2000-2007) and President of the Board in 2007-2008. From 1998- 2012 she coordinated the Dutch participation in the Pépinières Européennes pour Jeunes Artistes programs, was advisory board member of TransCultural Exchange (USA); board member and President of On-the-Move; and former board member of the Thami Mnyele Foundation, which runs a guest studio program for artists from African countries in Amsterdam. From 2008 to 2014, she was a member of several EU Open Method of Coordination (OMC) expert groups on improving the conditions for the mobility of artists and other professionals in the cultural field. Maria is the Chair of the Board of the Foundation.
Yasmine Ostendorf is the founder and convener the Green Art Lab Alliance. She has extensively worked on international cultural mobility programmes and on the topic of art and ecology, having worked at expert organizations including Julie’s Bicycle (United Kingdom), Bamboo Curtain Studio (Taiwan), Cape Farewell (United Kingdom), Labverde (Brazil) and Trans Artists (Netherlands). She is the founder of the Nature Research Department at the Jan van Eyck Academy (Netherlands, 2017), the Van Eyck Food Lab (2018) and the Future Materials Bank (2020). She has been organising Food Art Film Festivals showcasing innovative and sustainable food/art practices whilst building local networks between artists, scientists and regenerative farmers across the globe. Furthermore she has been curator-in-residence in various art institutions, including Kunst Haus Wien (Austria), colectivo amasijo (Mexico) and Capacete (Brazil) and mentored over 200 artists globally with their work. Her book ‘Let’s Become Fungal!’, applies a mycological lens to define rhizomatic models of collaboration based on the mycelium.
Yasmine is the director of the galas Foundation.

CREW

 Kayla Archer is a Barbadian based in Mexico City. She’s worked in a diversity of areas including food security, gender activism and art research. Blending this experience with her academic background in International Studies with a focus on Latin America and the Caribbean, she’s motivated to strengthen and build meaningful relationships between the English-speaking Caribbean and Latin America through cultural encounters and imaginative investigations into historical and ecological connections. 
Harriet Matzdorf (b. 1995, USA) is an artist and creative practitioner working in sustainable food systems, environmental design, and creative commons. Her professional experiences have centered in regenerative agriculture, art research, and global arts networks with an emphasis on art and ecology explored through storytelling and immersive social design. Using varied formats, her research highlights transspecies perspectives, nature-culture perceptions, and spatial narratives across rural and urban settings.
Patricia Bárbara is a Brazilian transdisciplinary artist and a creative producer, with a background in Cinema, Visual Arts and Performing Arts. She develops her performative work using her body as an instrument for questioning standards, rules, limitations, imposed distances, the status quo. Currently doing a master’s degree program in History of Science, Tecniques and Epistemology.
Over the last 20 years, she has been working with the greatests brazilian arts and culture festivals, such as Multiplicidade, Panorama or Atos de Fala.