KidsArt4Future: our journey between art and imagination

The project, launched at the beginning of 2020 to imagine the future working environment through the eyes and creativity of children, ranging from spaceships and galaxies, included young ones from Italy, Germany, Austria, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Russia, Serbia, and Slovakia.

Personalised contributions were received from each country, exhibiting outstanding drawings and new works of art, starting from the children's creations through collaborations with local emerging artists in UniCredit countries. 

Here are some of the initiatives that our young artists participated in!

In Austria, the Bank held a dedicated workshop for our colleagues’ children and for the young guests from the SOS Children's Village (an international organisation committed to helping children), with the support of professional art mediators and 2 young artists. Although the main theme was "The future workplace of your loved ones", with a little imagination from the children, it turned into future visions of their possible professions - for example the underwater dancer. At the end of the day, all 14 artworks were put together and converted into a postcard that was displayed at the Kunstforum and at UniCredit Bank Austria's headquarters.

In Italy, the young participants, together with their families, took part in a creative workshop, held in digital form, led by anthropologist and artist Marcella Vanzo. The workshop entitled "My New World" inspired by Asimov, Huxley and Mickey Mouse, but above all by the children's own drawings, took the participants on a spatial journey into the future, where inventiveness and imagination gave rise to original works and drawings, stimulating the children's perception and thinking. Starting from the children's work, Marcella Vanzo will create a piece of art for UniCredit that will be delivered by December 2021 and will remain as a testimony of this experience.

In Germany, the children of our colleagues were asked to draw their idea of “the bank of the future” and their parents’ workplace. Around 50 drawings were submitted, and an internal jury selected 3 of the most distinctive designs. In this context, mechanization, mobility, agility and work-life balance were the recurring motifs in the children's paintings. Inspired by these children’s drawings, the emerging artists Boban Andjelkovic and Anna Schölß, which were selected with the support of external art experts and the art institution Platform Munich, created new artworks, which were then displayed at the CEO Office of UCI and are currently presented in the “HVB KunstCUBE K4”, an exclusive exhibition platform in the UCB AG’s Private Banking headquarter in Munich.

In Central and Eastern Europe, most of the Banks took a similar route to enrich their offices with the works of young artists who offered a unique and very creative perspective of what the Bank of the future could look like: from spaceships to starting businesses on new planets, from creating huge aquariums to the UniCredit ambulance service. The children let their imaginations run wild and showed us what the Bank of the next millennium will look like!

Thanks to local artists, Zeljka Paic (Banja Luka), Adisa Vatreš Selimović (Sarajevo), Ivaylo Hristov (Bulgaria) e Aleksa Gajic (Serbia), the children's drawings have become true works of art.