In 2025, Columbia Threadneedle Foundation’s ongoing support for its long-term charity partners enabled them to deliver vital work to improve individual lives, whilst also driving fundamental social change.
Additionally, the Foundation awarded several individual charitable grants to support charities within the communities in which we live and work, and our employees in the UK and Europe took part in volunteering opportunities to help worthwhile causes.
Access Sport
Access Sport places inclusion at the heart of community sport across the UK, ensuring that everyone, irrespective of their background or ability, can enjoy the benefits of sport and physical activity.
In 2025, with the Foundation’s support, Access Sport has taken bold steps to expand disability inclusion initiatives in Tower Hamlets by supporting four organisations to develop special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) inclusive sessions. These include Taekwondo, Thai boxing, and female-only football session, allowing women and girls the chance to access the sport in a safe and welcoming environment.
The charity also expanded its school holiday programmes in Lewisham, Southwark, Ealing, and Greenwich/Bexley, ensuring children and young people have access to fun, inclusive activities during the holidays.
To celebrate the power of inclusive sport, Access Sport delivered two multi-sport festivals for primary and secondary school children in Lewisham, Southwark and Thamesmead. These summer events brought families together and connected them with local inclusive clubs.
Access Sport
Take One Picture at the National Gallery
The Foundation supported the National Gallery’s Take One Picture learning programme and exhibition for eighth consecutive year in 2025. This nationwide initiative for primary schools uses a single painting from the Gallery’s collection to inspire cross-curricular learning. Each year, pupils respond creatively to the selected artwork, fostering curiosity, creativity and a lifelong connection with art.
Pieter de Hooch’s The Courtyard of a House in Delft (1658) was selected as the source of inspiration for this year’s programme. The exhibition spanned three sites around the National Gallery and featured an Augmented Reality (AR) trail on Jubilee Walk, allowing visitors to view artworks virtually on pavements, making the experience more accessible and engaging for new audiences.
Over 83,000 children from 380 schools took part in the Take One Picture learning programme in 2025 – the biggest cohort since the programme launched.
Pieter de Hooch, The Courtyard of a House in Delft, 1658 © The National Gallery, London
AT The Bus
AT The Bus provides school-based programmes of art as therapy to help improve the mental wellbeing of children and young people aged 5–18 in Oxfordshire and London.
The Foundation helped AT The Bus deliver 167 programmes and 1,837 art-as-therapy sessions to 930 children across 15 schools during the 2024/2025 academic year, open new studios in Oxford and London and train 19 facilitators in the Beattie Methodology, a therapeutic intervention that supports the mental wellbeing of young people, helping them build their self-confidence.
In 2025, AT The Bus hosted a family workshop for our London employees.
Flower Tree produced by the children and young people attending AT The Bus
Clean Break
Clean Break delivers high quality theatre programmes in prisons and communities across the UK. With an excellent track record of working with women impacted by the criminal justice system, they address long-term issues through theatre-based activities and holistic support.
The Foundation supports Clean Break’s Members Programme, a weekly, tiered programme of theatre-based workshops underpinned by holistic, trauma-informed support. Delivered from Clean Break’s women-only studios in Kentish Town in London, this programme helps Members find their voices, tell their stories and improve wellbeing as well as equipping women with transferable skills that open pathways into employment, education and volunteering within the arts and beyond.
In 2025, Clean Break extended its touring play Scenes from Lost Mothers due to high demand and provide acting traineeships for three women with lived experience of the criminal justice system.
Cean Break launched their Young Company for women and non-binary people aged 18–25. Following an Audition & Interview Day in September, nine participants joined in October to train in acting and theatre-making, receive support and perform in a new play.
Clean Break Big Night Out by Tracey Anderson
Additional creative opportunities include:
- Lullaby Project – Adapted from Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute in the US, Members collaborated with professional musicians to write and perform personal lullabies for their children.
- Royal Literary Fund – Writing for Self-Expression – Fifteen Members attended a four-week poetry course to foster resilience, wellbeing and creative expression.
- Dance Project with The Place – Eleven Members participated in a 10-week dance programme, culminating in three performances.
New charity partners
In 2025, the Foundation selected two new charity partners to deliver impactful programmes in the coming year:
- WizeUp – a charity providing financial education for children and young people.
- Untold – a charitable organisation delivering a creative art industry training programme in prison and working with creative partners to improve the employability prospects of young offenders post release.
Additional charitable giving
Germany
- KIDsmiling supports socially disadvantaged children and teenagers by creating equal opportunities for personal development through sports, education and cultural activities.
Italy
- Fondazione IBVA plays a vital role in Milan by supporting vulnerable families and individuals with education, food insecurity and housing needs.
Spain
- A LA PAR helps children and adults with learning disabilities through sports activities at their Mountain Bike school in Madrid.
Switzerland
- Pro Juventute is dedicated to supporting the rights and needs of Swiss children and youth from disadvantaged backgrounds.
UK
Edinburgh
- Drum Riding for the Disabled– provides therapy, fitness and skills development for disabled adults and children through interactions with horses.
- Ravelrig Riding for the Disabled (Ravelrig RDA) offers therapeutic and recreational equine activities to people with disabilities.
London
- City Harvest alleviates food poverty by putting surplus food to good use in a sustainable way by distributing it, for free, to Londoners in need.
Swindon
- Youth Adventure Trust helps young people, from ages 11-16 in Swindon and Wiltshire to fulfil their potential, build resilience and lead positive lives in the future.
- Reach Inclusive Arts provides a variety of artistic opportunities for people with a range of disabilities and additional needs, throughout Swindon and Wiltshire.
- Children’s Scrapstore provides new and used items, such as arts and crafts materials, at affordable prices, benefitting over 50,000 people in Swindon.
