Arts and Culture Development
Taishin Arts Award
Taiwanese contemporary art creators need domestic creative resources and international channels to be seen and heard. At the same time, contemporary art forms are manifolded and not easily understood by the general public, and they need promotions and professional art educations. The Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture (referred to as the Taishin Arts Foundation) was established in 2001 and launched the "Taishin Arts Award" the following year. It has been supporting professional art creation for many years and is an indicator award in Taiwan. Advocating "innovation, diversity, deep cultivation, and public" as its core spirit, through a unique selection mechanism, including all-year-round professional nominations, observations and art reviews, and inviting international jurors to participate in the final selection of the Performing Arts Award, the Visual Arts Award (with a prize of NT$1,000,000 each), and the Annual Grand Prize (with a prize of NT$1,500,000), which are the highest prizes for contemporary arts in Taiwan.
In 2013, the Taishin Arts Award launched the ARTalks website to publish the arts award selection process and commentary articles of nomination observers. The ARTalks not only collects the art reviews of major domestic scholars and experts, but also serves as a platform for the public to express their artistic views and dialogues. Furthermore, the public can obtain information on art exhibitions and performances, read expert comments in various fields, and post comments through the website.
Key Inputs and Outputs
In 2024, Taishin Bank Foundation for Art and Culture continued to support contemporary art in Taiwan by investing more than NT$15 million in organizing the Taishin Arts Award and its associated activities, such as art events, ARTalks and other online communities, and exchange with international jury panels.
Over the past 22 years, the Taishin Arts Award has invited 202 domestic and foreign jurors, selected 73 award-winning works and 344 shortlisted works, and 181 nomination observers wrote more than 500 observation reports and more than 1,983 exhibition and performance reviews; through the operation of the award mechanism, combined with the promotion of professional art criticism writing, it has become a force that continues to drive the development of Taiwan's overall arts and culture ecology. By the end of 2024, the accumulated page views of the ARTalks website exceeded 3.8 million, and the column "Art and Mind" was launched to expand public art participation in an easy and interesting way, so that the dialogues on art discussions can reach from the elite to the masses.
Taishin Good Art—Promoting Arts and Culture Events
The Foundation launches "Taishin Good Art," which offers seasonal art exhibitions presented at the Taishin FHC Headquarters building's first-floor lobby and bi-weekly noon concerts at the second-floor Yuan Hall, together with intermittent talks and movie screenings featuring artistic and cultural topics. Every month, the Foundation organizes "arts and cultural programs for Taishin employees," which invite all employees of the Taishin Group to join.
The investments in the promotion of arts and cultural events held by the Foundation in 2024 reached approximately NT$1,400,000.
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Taishin Tower Lobby Exhibition
The Foundation regularly organizes art exhibitions in the lobby on the first floor of Taishin FHC Headquarters building. The exhibitions showcase the imaginative world of artists, infusing a variety of creative atmosphere in the reception area of the headquarters building.
Four exhibitions were presented in 2024, including the work "Garden" in which artist Wang Yu-Song picked up stones and shells from the banks of the Tamsui River as materials, taking people to a maze of all things in time and space. Yu Shih-Fu used advanced 3D printing technology to shape birds flying in the sky to create a kinetic installation work "Flying Posture", a symbol of freedom and courage. Li Cheng-Liang's work "Rest Station" is like a hill hidden in the woods, surrounded by small trees and plants, providing a place for the public to rest their minds.
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Friday Noon Concerts
Friday Noon Concerts are held every other Friday. For these concerts, famous Taiwanese and foreign musicians are invited to perform different genres of music. The concerts are also open to the public for free, and have accumulated a total of 421 performances in the past 18 years.
A total of 25 concerts were planned for 2024, including the Taiwan Bamboo Orchestra, the Baroque Orchestra, the Vincent Hsu & Soy La Ley Afro-Cuban Jazz Band, the DonSir Jazz Orchestra, etc. In cooperation with the Taipei Philharmonic Chorus' "2024 International Choral Music Festival", the Leioa Kantika Korala from Spain was invited to perform at the event. In addition, the Foundation held a parent-child concert for the second year during the summer vacation, inviting the "Mulab Fun" team to create an entertaining and educational summer music festival for the parent-child audience through live performances of storytellers, pianists, clarinetists, cellists, and dancers
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Employee Arts Courses
Employee arts courses have been introduced with contents ranging from art appreciation, theatrical performance, and parent-child activities, to film screenings.
In 2024, a total of 12 art and cultural courses were organized for employees, attracting 754 participants. The activities included watching the Off-Broadway musical "I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change", the parent-child version of the sound performance "Dear John－Never Say Never", the Museum of NTUE's Dream Project - "Battle City: Finale" exhibition, and the movie "Nam June Paik: Moon Is the Oldest TV". In addition, Taishin Arts Foundation publish[1]es the monthly "Art News" e-newsletter, recommending popular performances and activities to Taishin employees. Employees are encouraged to write their after thoughts of the performances, which are then published in the information-sharing page on the foundation's website
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2022
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4
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13 sessions
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6 stages/ 25 events
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2023
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1
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24 sessions
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14 sessions/more than 700 participants
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2024
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4
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25 sessions
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14 sessions/about 754 participants
Finance Courses for Artists
Adhering to the original intention of giving back to the society through its core business, we have planned basic financial courses for artists and teams to help artists devote themselves to creation, while cultivating sound wealth management capabilities. Two lectures were held from the end of 2024 to the beginning of 2025, with a total of 107 participants. These lectures were well received by the participants.
The "Taishin Corporate Sustainability Inclusion Group" adheres to the original intention of giving back to society through its core business. Together with the Foundation for Arts and Culture, it has planned for the first time a basic financial course for artists and creation teams. Financial professionals of Taishin explained and shared financial management and investment experiences, as well as anti-fraud knowledge, so that artists could devote themselves to creation while cultivating sound wealth management capabilities.
Arts and Culture Sponsorship
Taishin FHC is committed to enriching the artistic vision of Taiwanese people and lowering the threshold of art appreciation, so that the public can come into contact with art from daily lives, cultivate the vision of art, and enrich their soul and life. It continues to introduce diversified, international, classic and high-quality art performances in the form of art sponsorship, so that people in Taiwan can all enjoy classic art from all over the world.
The investments in arts and cultural sponsorship activities by Taishin FHC in 2024 reached NT$27.48 million.
Enrich the artistic vision of Taiwanese people: Since 2006, Taishin has sponsored the performances of well-known arts and cultural organizations in a large-scale manner, with 684,000 participants in a single year and a total investment of more than NT$316 million, attracting up to 8.23 million participants.
