6 December 2022

Bell & Ross teams up with the Tara Ocean Foundation for supporting the scientific exploration of the Ocean to create change

In Austria, climate strikes reached the country's universities in mid-November. Since yesterday, one of the lecture halls of the University of Applied Arts Vienna has been occupied by the initiative 'Erde Brennt' in solidarity with the international movement 'End Fossil: Occupy!'. The University of Applied Arts Vienna describes itself as 'University for Future' and is known as a forerunner for new ways to think and create. Recently, the university presented the new 'Transformation Studies' programme of the 'Art x Science School for Transformation' of two universities where students will have the chance to combine artistic and scientific approaches for analyzing transformations such as the climate chance or digitalization for creating possible solutions (details). The 'Erde Brennt' (Earth is Burning) initiative addresses additionally to climate-related issues a change in the social and education policy; 'burning' topics that many projects worldwide are working on.

Today, Fashion.at received the latest news about a new sponsorship by the French luxury watch company Bell & Ross which was started as a university project in 1992 with the aim to create durable timepieces. In the last 30 years, the brand has created watches for extreme situations such as for pilots or divers. Now, Bell & Ross provides as part of the collaboration watches from the 'Diver' collection for the team of the floating scientific laboratory on the schooner Tara dedicated to the protection of the Oceans. The team consists of 6 sailors, 6 researchers, a correspondent and an artist. The schooner is the crucial part of the Tara Ocean Foundation, founded in 2003 by Angès Troublé, also known as fashion designer agnès b. It's the first publicly recognised foundation in France dedicated to the ocean and Special Observer to the UN. The foundation collaborates with the IOC (Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission) of the UNESCO by sharing scientific data from Tara for the international community.

In the press release received today, Bell & Ross said that the aim of the collaboration is to encourage and support all actions and missions of the Tara Ocean Foundation, whose primary purpose is to explore, understand and share to create change. The website fondationtaraocean.org accompanies the scientific projects, which counts until today 12 expeditions in 50 countries and 250 scientific publications, with an own video channel for insights into the work of artists on the schooner such as artist in residence Lara Tabet (video) and educational programmes for schools including resources.

Images, from left: The schooner Tara is the floating scientific laboratory of the Tara Ocean Foundation. Photo: © Sacha Bollet / Tara Ocean Foundation. Right: Bell & Ross started the collaboration with the Tara Ocean Foundation on 5 December 2022 with the aim to encourage and support the mission of the foundation. The team members of the schooner Tara were outfitted with watches from the 'Diver' collection.