The Lead Up To The Big Day

ELIA Executive Director, Maria Hansen describes the courtship between ELIA and Royal Talens and why we’re such a great match for each other. Some partnerships are meant to be.

Many of you will know that this month ELIA announced a new corporate partnership with global art supplies producer, Royal Talens. Let me fill you in on how this glorious union came about…

Last summer I received a mysterious email from a person representing a corporate entity, reaching out to me to see if we could establish some form of contact. I was apprehensive, fearing that this was a sales pitch of which I receive far too many. But it was July and I had a bit of time, so I clicked through to the website. Gorgeous visuals greeted me, of paint tubes and pastels in all sizes and colours. I searched on, couldn’t tear myself away and liked what I saw very much. This was Royal Talens, one  the leading producers of fine art products in the world.

What followed was a process of courtship in the online space, a series of dates shall we say. For some time now, ELIA had been looking to establish a meaningful corporate relationship in order to establish a new pillar in our business model. A condition for any such partnership is a strong alignment on strategy and values. ‘Could this be the one’, I wondered? ‘Maybe we should actually meet’, suggested Royal Talens’ commercial director Leo Stülke.

Many an invitation to the Royal Talens Head Office in Apeldoorn entered my digital agenda. Only to be postponed, as lockdown continued and operational matters took over. But Leo and I persevered, nonetheless, bringing in other team members and learning more about each other as we went along.

Royal Talens is extremely keen to share its knowledge of materials and painting and drawing techniques with teachers and students at ELIA member schools, while at the same time hoping to stay close to the current discourse on arts education. Environmental sustainability is very much on their mind and they are proud to have developed the water-based oil paint Cobra, had addressing this very issue. Royal Talens has maintained impressive partnerships with the Rijksmuseum and Van Gogh Museum in the Netherlands, making the art of painting accessible to everyone. Their international reach overlaps that of ELIA to some extent, but both of us could find new contacts through each other’s extensive networks.

And so we courted and liked what we saw. Finally, ELIA proposed… a partnership! Fingers and toes were crossed by the ELIA team as we waited for the big decision from Royal Talens which came faster than expected: it was a YES. Royal Talens agreed to become official corporate partner of ELIA, starting on 1 June. On 19 May, my colleague Derville Quigley and I finally made it to Apeldoorn to admire the monumental Royal Talens building that also houses the oh-so-amazing factory of this 120+ year old company. CEO Ronald Benning and I signed, and we all celebrated what feels like a perfect match. Please note the confetti between the lines!

ELIA members had the opportunity to meet Royal Talens during our online session on Green Transformation of Art Making. Royal Talens will continue to make regular appearances at our online and physical events. We very much hope that students and teachers at ELIA art schools will enjoy this collaboration together with us. A big thank you Royal Talens for taking the plunge with ELIA – here we go!