About Riva

RIVA is a charity which provides free artist residencies both in its Hackney studio and in schools. It gives participants the opportunity to experience directly the creative process by working alongside artists to produce high quality artwork themselves both individually and collectively.

RIVA focuses on designing projects for children and young people that both inform and express creatively the nature and climate emergency. RIVA believes there needs to first be a positive connected experience to nature in order  to nurture a wish to protect it

RIVA's approach is multi-disciplinary and uses imagination and mythology as a way of relating to nature. Examples of this are The Forest is our Supermarket, The Bee Museum, Animal Spirits .

On occasion RIVA makes awards to selected organisations engaged in similar art projects.

RIVA strives to enable the participants to achieve their creative, personal and intellectual potential and to have the opportunity to develop new strategies for making, understanding and appreciating art. The resulting confidence and ownership of the art work has a very positive impact on other areas of life.

RIVA works primarily in Hackney, Islington, Camden and Southwark.

"All RIVA projects have culminated in an exhibition where individual and group work has been shared with the wider school and where possible parents/carers. [RIVA's] work with the children has been exceptional and this collaboration has become a unique selling point of our school." - Aoife O'Grady, Headteacher, Our Lady and St Joseph Primary, 2022.