Sometimes it all starts with something small: an artist who dreams of recording her first DVD; a sculptor who seeks to produce her first personal exhibition; a cultural manager who opens a space for encounters; a teacher who imagines a project that invites generations of visual artists to dialogue.

Making women's work in the creative industries visible implies recognizing the collective processes, the spaces of mutual support and the strategies that allow them to sustain creation in contexts that are often challenging.

Thus, since its creation in 2023, the cultural platform Fondo de Arte Joven (FAJ) supports projects led by women working in different contemporary creative fields. It is an accompaniment that seeks to strengthen cultural initiatives with the capacity to generate impact on their protagonists and the environments in which they develop, while exploring new forms of cultural participation and strengthening the social fabric, promoting perspectives of rights, diversity and inclusion in the emerging cultural and creative industries.

Through access to resources, the visibility of their projects and/or creative processes, professional training, and the possibility of connecting and establishing alliances with other essential figures in the cultural ecosystem, each proposal, led by women, has been able to consolidate and transcend local contexts, facilitating the projection of their work inside and outside Cuba.

Here are some examples:

With the creation grant awarded by the FAJ, singer Annys Batista produced her DVD “Annys Batista Live Session”, winner of the Cubadisco 2024 award in the “Medium-length Audiovisual” category.

In June 2024, guitarist Patricia Díaz and lutenist Sofía Pedrera, members of the «Aguas de Marzo» Duo, premiered their first musical production «Gaia» at Havana's Martí Theater in June 2024, as part of FAJ's calls for proposals to support creative projects in the field of music.

It was also possible to carry out the project «Las ensoñaciones del reposo», by visual artist Giselle Lucía Navarro, recent winner, in Paris, of the Bernard Grau Scholarship in sculpture. Her project, supported by the FAJ, comprising five abstract textile and fiber pieces on metallic structures, was exhibited at the 15th Havana Biennial (2025).

One of FAJ's strategic objectives is to finance and support projects that have a positive impact on art education. Thus, the collaboration with artist, curator and teacher Evelynn Alvarez was conceived for the realization of her initiative «Last Chapter of a Beautiful Drama», a program of talks and meetings between artists, curators, teachers and cultural managers, with the aim of opening new ways of learning beyond the classroom.

Read more about this project HERE.

Another fundamental dimension has been the creation of networks and strategic alliances. With this premise in mind, the promotion of the creative-entrepreneurial ecosystem, with a gender focus, has been a cross-cutting element of the networking space «Luz Verde,» established by FAJ since 2025, also conceived as an opportunity for Cuban artists, entrepreneurs, researchers and creators to meet, exchange experiences and cooperate.

Opening paths, sharing tools, and strengthening networks are part of FAJ's strategic objectives. Each project, collaboration, or community that is activated around art must lead, as a fundamental principle, to more women being able to create, empower themselves, and occupy their rightful place in culture for development.