Weaving Worlds
Creators Fund is a venture studio that invests in artists building cultural worlds.
ABOUT
Creators Fund is a venture studio that co-creates and invests in artists building cultural worlds.
We help transform artistic and technological IP into scalable ventures across disciplines, media, and markets. Our aim is to redefine how art is created, distributed, and monetized by developing repeatable methodologies for value creation and capture while enabling open collaboration on creative and technological primitives.
APPROACH
Our Three-Step Venture Process:
Inquiry
We begin with sustained cultural, technological, and academic research, working with artists and scholars to examine how narratives, systems, and infrastructures shape collective futures. Opportunities emerge through deep study, not trend capture.
Formation
Insights are translated into early-world structures through rigorous conceptual development, material experimentation, and collaborative testing. Each project is shaped with attention to coherence, feasibility, and long-term viability.
Realisation
Worlds that demonstrate cultural, institutional, and economic integrity are developed into ventures, supported through partnerships, capital alignment, and carefully sequenced modes of public and market engagement.
Creators Fund collaborates with artists, cultural institutions, and aligned partners to develop long-term ventures rooted in cultural and creative intellectual property.
For Artists & Institutions:
Worldbuilding as Method
We treat worldbuilding as a rigorous cultural and economic methodology. Artistic concepts are developed into coherent transmedia worlds that can sustain multiple forms of expression and value over time. This includes strategic thinking around creative IP, technological infrastructure, and cross-platform circulation, while preserving artistic integrity and authorship.
Venture Development and Stewardship
We support ventures through their full lifecycle, from early formation to institutional and market presence. This includes guidance across funding structures, design and identity, partnerships, legal frameworks, communications, and financial strategy. Our role is not to extract or repackage work, but to help artists and institutions build structures capable of sustaining creative practice at scale.
CASE STUDY I
Genesis
How can arts and culture leverage economic and planetary transformation? Worldbuilding can create compelling climate narratives and address global challenges. How can they catalyze societal change?
CASE STUDY II
Gabriel Massan: Dromomania
What happens when urban life becomes governed by systems of acceleration, extraction, and control? How do contemporary cities shape movement, desire, and agency?
TEAM
Co-Founder, Managing Partner
Susanna is a cultural entrepreneur and investor working on economic structures that underpin the creative industries. She began her career at Maison Martin Margiela, where she developed a foundation in systems thinking, design, and worldbuilding, shaping her understanding of authorship and how cultural value is constructed. Since 2012, she has built ventures and investment platforms across the creative and climate technology sectors, focusing on how ideas develop into scalable forms of intellectual property and infrastructure. At Creators Fund, she invests in and works with artists to build companies around cultural and technological IP. Her work spans artistic, technological, and institutional contexts, with a focus on ownership, distribution, and structuring creative systems to enable ecological production and long-term regeneration.
Susanna Barla
Operating Partner
Hanna is an intellectual property lawyer, cultural strategist, and curator working at the intersection of contemporary art, legal infrastructure, and creative economies. She began her career in law, focusing on authorship, IP, and the structuring of artistic practices across jurisdictions, shaping her approach to culture as a system of ownership and value. Over the past decade, she has built and advised cultural platforms, hybrid spaces, and cross-border initiatives that explore how artistic production can be structured, protected, and scaled. Working internationally with artists, institutions, developers, and private stakeholders, she develops frameworks that connect creative practice with legal architecture and economic models, positioning her to operate at the core of Creators Fundās approach to structuring and scaling IP from inception.
Hanna Ouaziz
Advisor
Andrea brings 25 years of expertise connecting science, art and public engagement as chairman of Woven Foundation for Creative Climate Communication. His leadership of innovative projects across museums, government organizations and universities in Europe, USA, South Africa and Brazil provides Creators Fund with invaluable institutional partnership insights. As board member of Deutsches Museum and scientific advisor for Universcience Paris, he offers strategic guidance on cultural institution engagement. His membership in the World Economic Forum's Expert Network and experience as an Osher Fellow at the Exploratorium in San Francisco supports the fund's mission to transform artistic production into sustainable investment opportunities.
Andrea Bandelli
Cultural Systems & Partnerships
Shakthi is a cultural strategist and translator operating at the intersection of contemporary art, emerging technology, and institutional transformation. Trained at Princeton in mathematics, poetry, and classical philosophy, she applies systems thinking and narrative intelligence to the structuring of cultural IP, partnership architectures, and long-term value creation. Her work spans artist-led ventures, institutional collaborations, and cross-border cultural development across Europe, the US, Asia, and the Middle East, engaging private collections, foundations, and public institutions. She has worked with leading artists including Refik Anadol and James Turrell, and across contexts such as the 0x Collection, the Getty Institute, and the Kennedy Center, positioning her at the core of Creators Fundās model of translating cultural signal into structured, scalable systems.
Shakthi Shrima
Advisor
Christiane Paul is Curator of Digital Art at the Whitney Museum of American Art and Professor at The New School, bringing unmatched authority in the evolution of digital and new media art. Her award-winning publications, including seminal texts published by Thames and Hudson and Blackwell-Wiley, have shaped the theoretical foundations of the field internationally. Through landmark exhibitions such as Programmed: Rules, Codes, and Choreographies in Art and her leadership of the Whitneyās artport platform, she has defined how digital practices operate within institutional contexts. At Creators Fund, Christiane provides critical insight into the cultural, curatorial, and market positioning of digital art, strengthening our strategy for institutional partnerships and ensuring our ventures move fluently between emerging technologies and established cultural frameworks.
Christiane Paul
Advisor
Daniel is an experiential designer and educator working at the intersection of culture, technology, and systems thinking, bringing a critical and production-driven lens to Creators Fund. As Course Leader at London College of Fashion (UAL), he reframes fashion communication as a strategic medium for interrogating global structures and shaping future-facing narratives, an approach that informs CFās fashion, merchandise, and cross-sector IP strategy. His portfolio spans digital, exhibition, and live commissions for institutions including the British Museum, Serpentine Galleries, Google, and Samsung, grounding the fundās physical and digital integration strategy in hands-on production experience. His research into uncertainty, contingency, and complexity in artistic practice provides conceptual depth to Creators Fundās elastic IP model and its multi-revenue, cross-platform approach to cultural venture building.
LinkedIn
Daniel Felstead
Advisor
Jonathon is an experimental philosopher and artist acclaimed as a "poet of ideas" by The New Yorker and a "multimedia philosopher-prophet" by The Atlantic. His conceptually-driven transdisciplinary projects explore societal transformation through methods adapted from both sciences and humanities. Working across institutional boundaries as a research associate at University of Arizona's College of Fine Arts, fellow at the Berggruen Institute, and artist-in-residence at the SETI Institute, he brings unique perspective to Creators Fund's worldbuilding initiatives. Jonathon has exhibited at prestigious institutions from LACMA to CERN, and his work co-directing the Consortium for Climate-Adapted Architectural Heritage at Fraunhofer Institute directly informs Genesis's approach to nature-inspired cultural innovation. His six published books and Forbes art column demonstrate his ability to translate complex concepts into accessible narratives.
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Jonathon Keats
Advisor
Diane is a pioneering curator and cultural strategist working at the intersection of contemporary art, technology, and institutional transformation. Her practice explores how cultural organizations and artists adapt to technological, environmental, and societal change, with a focus on long-term relevance and systemic innovation. Founder of We Are Museums and Blueshift, Diane has advised leading cultural institutions and global platforms, including the Palace of Versailles, Tezos, and EIT Climate-KIC, and has worked closely with artists such as Marina AbramoviÄ. Through Creators Fund, she contributes strategic insight on institutional change, ecosystem design, and the role of culture in shaping resilient, future-facing models for museums and artists.
Diane Drubay
Advisor
Ruth brings over three decades of experience as a narrative architect and futurist, specializing in translating abstract systems into compelling storytelling frameworks. Her work focuses on developing sustainable socio-economic models rooted in accessibility and inclusiveness, offering Creators Fund a critical perspective on long-term value creation and cultural impact. With a lifelong engagement in the arts as agents of transformation, she approaches language as a foundational technology that shapes collective imagination and future possibility. Her poetry collection Fears to Feathers (2023) reflects her ability to distill complex ideas into emotionally resonant experiences that inform CFās worldbuilding and IP development strategy.
Ruth Glendinning
Advisor
James Pihakis, PhD, is a cultural strategist and institution-builder working at the intersection of museums, public art, and large-scale cultural infrastructure. He served as Founding Director and Lead Curator of EMRCA under Thomas Krens, where he developed a curatorial framework integrating art, engineering, and digital systems. He later acted as Vice President of Global Cultural Asset Management, contributing to national cultural strategies under the Saudi Ministry of Culture, including the Amaala arts program, national museums strategy, and public art initiatives. His work spans institutional strategy, curatorial development, and cross-sector collaboration across the US, GCC, Europe, and Asia, positioning him at the core of Creators Fundās approach to building and scaling cultural infrastructure within emerging global markets.
James Pihakis
PRESS
2025
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