A Swiss foundation

  • «Art and music touch places in the young patients where no injection can reach.»
    Petula Clark, singer, songwriter and patron of the Fondation ART-THERAPIE

  • «Music touches us emotionally, where words alone can't.»
    Johnny Depp

  • «Music can build bridges where the spoken language cannot.»
    Valeri Gergiev, conductor and opera company director, patron oft he Fondation ART-THERAPIE

  • «In a peripheral hospital, paediatrics is like a safe harbour»
    Dr. Valdo Pezzoli, head physician at the paediatrics department in the regional hospital of Lugano

  • «Art- and music therapy allow the patient to become immerged in another world.»
    C.B., art-therapist at University Children’s Hospital Zurich

  • «It is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self.»
    D. W. Winnicott, English paediatrician and psychoanalyst

Presentation of the Foundation

Our mission

The Art-Therapy Foundation was created in Geneva, Switzerland on 31 July 2008 as a non-profit utility organization recognized as such by Decree from the Council of State of the Canton of Geneva. The Foundation’s objective is to support art- and musicotherapy programs to facilitate the recovery of children, infants and young adults suffering from serious illness, who are hospitalized in Basel, Berne, Geneva, Lausanne, Lugano, St. Gallen, Winterthur and Zurich. The Foundation examines and reacts to every request from hospital centers wishing to integrate these programs.

Our values

The Art-Therapy Foundation wishes to provide access to art- and musicotherapy to as many injured, ill and hospitalized children as possible, in order to contribute to their recovery. This way the Foundation joins in the intentions of Uno’s International Convention on the Rights of the Child by ensuring the necessary health care for the well-being of children.

Our objectives

  • To develop art- and musicotherapy activities for children in hospitals and other health care centers in Switzerland.
  • To contribute to the scientific study and research related to art- and musicotherapy.
  • To promote art- and musicotherapy in medical environments and with the general public as an addition to medical care for seriously ill children.
  • To favor exchanges between major players involved with art- and musicotherapy.

Membership: Pro Fonds, Schweizerischer Dachverband für gemeinnützige Stiftungen und Vereine