Home - Bowness Family Foundation - Providing Access and Opportunity

Developing, supporting
& enriching our community

Developing, supporting &
enriching our community

The Bowness Family Foundation works with organisations to enrich the culture, education and potential of our community by providing access and opportunity.

Founded in 2008 by Bill Bowness AO, together with his daughters Natasha Bowness and Kelly Wyborn, the Foundation has three core areas of focus: arts and culture, education, and disability. In addition, we have worked for many years with a number of key strategic partners to create long-term benefits for the community.

Areas of focus

Arts & Culture

Developing talent, elevating photography, and nurturing the arts

Education

Providing access and opportunity to assist young people achieve their potential

Disability

Supporting people with a disability to achieve their goals

Partnerships

Over time we have developed a number of partnerships with major institutions that have helped strengthen their long-term capacity to benefit our community. Through these relationships we have supported innovative and strategically significant projects that have built organisational capacity and created opportunities for both organisations and individuals.

A BFF gift helped establish Australia’s first Telerehabilitation Clinic for speech pathology and other allied health services. Support has also enabled the establishment of the Queensland Aphasia Rehabilitation Centre (QARC) to optimise the lives of people affected by stroke and with complex communication and rehabilitation needs. Since 2014 the Bowness Family Foundation Young Achievers’ Scholarship has provided disadvantaged young people with access to higher education to enable them to achieve their tertiary aspirations.

A BFF gift established the Zoos Victoria Endowment, a fund to grow the capacity to fight extinction, nurture animals, provide learning experiences and develop world leading zoo staff. Endowment earnings have been used to support disability initiatives including Dream Night. This special event, solely for children with disabilities and their families, enables them to experience the zoo free from barriers that can prevent them from visiting. Additional support has created an Access and Inclusion Coordination position, implementing initiatives to ensure all locations are fully accessible and inclusive and that ZV is a world-best place to visit, work, and volunteer.

BFF’s long association and partnership with the NGV has been focused on elevating photography and its role in the NGV collection. Support provided includes the establishment of the Bowness Family Endowment Fund for Photography, which is solely focused on developing and strengthening the NGVs international photography collection. It has enabled the NGV to acquire more than 100 works by leading international and women artists since 2008, contributed to publications and assisted with digitising the photography collection.

The Bowness family have been devotees and subscribers of The Australian Ballet for more than 40 years. Through this long association a close relationship with the Company has been formed and during this time the Bowness Family Foundation has supported the Annual Giving program, dancer development and the redevelopments of the Primrose Potter Ballet Centre and the Production Centre in Altona.

In 2020, the Bowness Family Foundation Endowment for Artistic Development was established to support world class coaching opportunities for current and future generations of dancers.