How would you explain your organization in 300 words or less?
The Glass Furnace is Turkey’s largest and best-equipped glass and art center. On the shore of the Riva river, the campus has given its back to the green nature in a creative and serene atmosphere.To be the center of all the glass related works and make glass art one of the basic art branches in our country. The Glass Furnace, which was originally designed as a glass studio but soon became a world-class glass center, continues its uninterrupted training and production activities. The Glass Furnace, where it has a glass collection including examples from contemporary glass, takes care to realize its education and production activities in the most creative, efficient and effective way possible. Field trips with elementary and middle schools, special shows, new year and spring festivals, daily, weekly and two-week workshops, daily tours, special events for companies and groups are organized, as well as open to curious visitors at any time.
How did this program begin?
Glass Furnace Foundation is Yilmaz Yalçinkaya’s life long dream. He fell in love with the hot molten glass when he saw gas lamp factory on a school trip in the 1950’s and followed this for the rest of his life. In 2002, he designed the Glass Furnace Foundation as a small school and he is still working with the same enthusiasm since. A glass studio soon became a world-class glass center, hosted more than 150 world renown glass artist and instructors for workshops and demo’s. Finished a successful artist in residence program with the support of the government. Organized 3 Turkish exhibitions in Finland and Sweden.
What is unique about the community you serve?
Glass Furnace Foundation is the first institution in Turkey, that was open to public for demo’s, workshops are available for all levels and doesn’t require a university degree. Also a small production facility available for designers for limited needs. Also the foundation has a scholarship program for university students, the scholarships support their glass art education both at The Glass Furnace and abroad. So, the foundation is very proud of the emerging young glass artist from Turkey!
How are you keeping your program financially sustainable & what strategies do you recommend?
Glass Furnace hosts more than 30.000 student for school trips. Students watch glass making demo’s in hot shop and flameworking studios and join a brief fusing workshop if they like to. These trips involve a special project combining glass activities in Glass Furnace and school education. They are also learning about sustainability, recycling, upcycling and environment as well. What we aim here is to help students combine their experience at the Glass Furnace with school curriculum such as physics, chemistry and art classes.
Through this, glass will be a part of their education and life. These trips were the biggest income source for the last couple of years until Covid-19. We also have a very small production team, we are able to make prototypes for designed objects, produce limited edition pieces and assist glass artists in hotshop, kiln casting and fusing studios. We‘ve been working on online education systems. We started one on one classes but to be able to close the gap Covid-19 opened will be challenging.
What impact are you seeing & how do you measure success?
In the last 18 years we hosted almost half a million elementary school students. In the last couple of years, we’d applications from students that visited the campus on a school trip when they were little and now they are coming back to work and learn professionally. This is a moral measure for our success. We supported almost 100 emerging glass artists from Turkey in the last 18 years. 3 of them got full scholarships from US. We had a fullbright scholar on campus. Every year there are approximately 10 glass exhibitions by the artists we support. We are also happy to see the Glass Community in Turkey evolve and grow in the last 18 years. Attended almost every GAS Conference for the last 25 years. We finished an Artist in Residence program with 8 Turkish and 8 International artists. We hosted demostrations with great masters such as Lino Tagliapietra, Bertil Vallien, Lucio Bubacco and many more…
How has the outbreak of COVID-19 impacted your program, if at all?
Unfortunately with Covid-19, The Glass Furnace had to close the campus. All our summer workshops, school trips and production orders were cancelled. We had a slight support form the government for the employees fee’s. But overall we had an important financial damage.