BORUSAN KOCABIYIK FOUNDATION
Standing as one of the leading industry organizations of Turkey, Borusan achieved progress by adopting the principle of sharing what is gained from the community back with the community. Focusing on education, culture, and arts under corporate social responsibility projects, Borusan maintained its growth by creating a national value on the one hand, while it undertook the contribution to society as a duty on the other hand.

Having contributed to the national educational and cultural life for years, Asım Kocabıyık, being the Founding and Honorary Chairperson of Borusan, founded the Asım Kocabıyık Culture and Education Foundation in 1992 as the first step taken towards executing these activities under a corporate structure.

Acting with the vision of “Contribution to Community,” he brought the Asım Kocabıyık Culture and Education Foundation and Borusan Sanat, established in 1997, together under the roof of Borusan Kocabıyık Foundation in 2008 within the scope of social responsibility activities. In 2011, activities of the foundation were expanded with Borusan Contemporary, while social responsibility initiatives at national and regional scales continued in areas such as culture, education, and women's empowerment.

Education

Borusan Holding firmly believes that Turkey's sustainable development and future is conditional on raising curious and eager generations who get quality education at modern standards and know how to access knowledge.

With this in mind, support for education is a number one responsibility and a priority area for Borusan. Borusan Kocabıyık Foundation assumed the construction works of Borusan Otomotiv Zehra Nurhan Kocabıyık Primary School; Gemlik Borusan Primary School; Borusan Asım Kocabıyık Technical and Industrial Vocational High School; Kocaeli University Asım Kocabıyık Vocational College; and Uludağ University Asım Kocabıyık Vocational College. The Foundation also completed the renovation works of Uludağ University's Faculty of Law, Afyon University's Faculty of Law, Uludağ University's Gemlik Asım Kocabıyık Culture Center, Asım and Nurhan Kocabıyık Teachers' Lodge, Zehra Nurhan Kocabıyık Girls' Dormitory and Asım Kocabıyık Boys' Dormitory, as well as the Library of Istanbul University's Faculty of Economics. Activities aimed at supporting the educational institutions established so as to address their basic needs and improve their educational quality continued in 2020, like every year.

The Project for Sustainable Quality Improvement in Education was initiated in 2009 at Uludağ University Gemlik Asım Kocabıyık Vocational College, which was constructed by Borusan Kocabıyık Foundation. The initiative was awarded numerous accolades in recognition of its educational quality excellence. The Project for Sustainable Quality Improvement in Education received the EFQM Certificate of Determination in 2009; Quality in Education Jury Encouragement Award and Competency in Excellence 3-Star Certificate in 2012; Quality Success Award in 2013; and Grand Prize and Competency in Excellence 5-Star Certificate in 2014.

The project also won the Turkey Excellence Grand Prize in 2016, gaining the distinctive position of the first and only vocational high school to receive the award.

Under the same project, Kocaeli Hereke Asım Kocabıyık Vocational High School was granted the "EFQM Certificate of Determination" in 2009, and the "EFQM Competency in Excellence 3-Star Certificate" in 2016 and 2018. In 2019, it was merged with the Hereke Vocational High School and named Hereke Asım Kocabıyık Vocational High School during the restructuring efforts aimed at vocational high schools. Taking more determined steps and getting new accolades in 2020, Hereke Asım Kocabıyık Vocational High School was also presented with an "EFQM Excellence in Competency-4 Star Certificate.” Curriculums and educators, administrators, and students grew as a result of the merger. In this context, a new educational program, prepared and planned with KALDER, is underway to make sure new educators and administrators reach the desired level.

Borusan Kocabıyık Foundation examined inequality of opportunity in education and its potential impact during the pandemic. Consequently, the Foundation launched an assistance project named "Nobody Should Stay Distant to Distance Education.” Under this project, accomplishing students at primary school, high school, and university levels from seven geographical regions of Turkey were provided with 3,850 tablets and computers through direct and indirect donations so as to ensure they continue their education with no interruption.

In the 2020 operating period, 94 schools across the country were donated over 12 thousand books to serve as a source of reference in their libraries. The number of books donated to public schools in need in all parts of Turkey reached 66 thousand over the course of five years. Such support was intended to help students improve their reading habits, dream and acquire new perspectives. Selected works sent to educational institutions consisted of children's books, world's classics, fairy tales, novels, stories, biographies, and poems by national and foreign authors. Schools will continue to receive such selections as part of a long-term support program.

Borusan Kocabıyık Foundation continued scholarship programs during the COVID-19 pandemic with no interruption. In 2020, 202 students were supported; while their conditions and health were followed during this period and some scholarship students received equipment support. Classical music grants for a master's degree overseas have been provided to 34 students to date. Educational scholarships of six gifted music students are ongoing under this program.

BORUSAN SANAT
Borusan Sanat is the driving force behind Borusan İstanbul Philharmonic Orchestra (BIPO), consisting of Turkey's best musicians and set to become one of the leading symphony orchestras in Europe, as well as Borusan Quartet, Borusan Children's Choir, Borusan Music House, and Borusan Klasik - a radio channel that plays classical music on the web.

Borusan Sanat also acts as the coordination center of Ertuğ & Kocabıyık Publications, a prominent publishing house offering exquisite art volumes presenting the rich cultural heritage of mainly Anatolia and recent Europe. A performance venue and a new home, Borusan Sanat opened Borusan Music House in 2010 and has since organized classical, jazz, world, and new music concerts as well as dance performances and contemporary art exhibitions at this venue, to reach a wider audience.

Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra (BIPO) performed 11 concerts for music enthusiasts in its 21st year. Borusan Quartet gave eight concerts on both banks of the Bosporus while hosting award-winning Turkish virtuosos and world-known musicians. During the 2019–2020 season, Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra shared the stage of Istanbul Lütfi Kırdar ICEC with Ray Chen, Yeol Eum Son, Miloš Karadaglić, Dorothea Röschmann, Angel Gheorghiu, Andreas Ottensamer, Yuri Bashmet, Pablo Ferrández, Harriet Krijgh, Ekaterina Siurina, Elena Maximova, Peter Sonn, and Bogdan Baciu.

In 2019, Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra (BIPO) hosted a violin virtuoso with a truly impeccable technique and skillful interpretation to match – Ray Chen. Chen is a talented musician who is praised worldwide and has won first place at the 2008 Yehudi Menuhin and 2009 Queen Elisabeth competitions and received the ECHO Klassik for his album released in 2017. Gürer Aykal conducted Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra accompanying pianist Yeol Eum Son. The concert, where La Clemenza di Tito, KV 491 Piano Concerto, KV 165 “Exultate jubilate” and Symphony in C Major were performed, is a tribute to the grandmaster of classical music. This season, Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Diego Matheuz, accompanied the eminent guitarist Miloš Karadaglić. The concerto for orchestra and guitar titled “Ink Dark Moon,” by the young English composer Joby Talbot, commissioned by BIPO, and performed by BBC Symphony Orchestra, made its Turkish premiere at Lütfi Kırdar. One of the most unusual concerts of this season was without a doubt “A Golden Page In Music History.” Historian Prof. Dr. İlber Ortaylı made a speech on the history of music simultaneously with the concert. Music devotees were familiar with the concert soloist, ECHO Klassik winner Dorothea Röschmann. Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra welcomed the new year with Angela Gheorghiu, one of the greatest stars of the opera scene. The soprano has always received praise and admiration since she stepped onto the stage in 1992. She has enchanted music lovers at concerts and operas around the world ever since. Gheorghiu got together with the Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Ludovic Morlot for the BIPO New Year’s Concert.

In 2020, Borusan Sanat suspended physical concerts as part of the measures taken to keep the virus under control, and executed several projects to protect the health of artists, audiences and employees, and to maintain the artistic level attained by the orchestra. Prior to these projects, which were initiated in October after rigorous preparations, recorded concerts were released on the web page to boost the morale of music lovers and employees. These records were viewed by thousands of individual users.

Highlight projects initiated by Borusan Sanat from October 2020 include weekly live radio concerts on Borusan Klasik; a video platform named borusansanat.tv that meets an emerging need in terms of digitalization and offers recorded concerts and pre-concert interviews, all in high tech, to music lovers free of charge; and thematic radio programs such as "BIPO Marathon" and "Borusan Music House" on Borusan Klasik.

Borusan Sanat, normally organizing 12 to 14 concerts every season, increased the number of events to 28 to adapt to changing conditions and turn these conditions into a benefit for arts in 2020. It also provided as many opportunities as possible to the members of BIPO to practice in concerts. Once the number of concerts grew, BIPO members performed throughout the year and thus maintained their existing artistic levels, while its target audience expanded thanks to the live radio broadcasts of these concerts for listeners. Borusan Sanat gave prominence to the medium of radio and the power of hearing in a period where exposure to digital content is huge. This is how it acquired a growing number of audiences for Borusan Klasik. Live BIPO concerts on Borusan Klasik in 2020 were conducted, first and foremost, by honorary conductor Gürer Aykal, Sascha Goetzel, Nayden Todorov, and Patrick Hahn. In addition, these concerts featured successful soloists such as Midori, Bülent Yazıcı, Valentina Lisitsa, and Naz İrem Türkmen.

Another important project of Borusan Sanat is the platform of borusansanat.tv, which allows Borusan Sanat to reach audiences via visual means. Borusan Sanat developed this platform to reach out to broader target and age groups, make arts available to them, as well as to expand, diversify and differentiate its potential followers. Efforts to this end were finalized between October and December in 2020, and borusansanat. tv was launched for music lovers on the first days of January 2021. Records are made by an expert team "at the moment and place of" the live concerts broadcast on Borusan Klasik and thus "maintain" their spirit. These are then made available on the TV platform after a rigorous preparation period. Contrary to similar platforms, these records are completely free of charge and offered to music devotees at certain intervals. The video record of each concert can be viewed on the same platform for a period of a week. borusansanat.tv offers content with high audio and visual quality thanks to an audio and recording team who makes the best of current conditions and high technologies. In addition, knowledge once in physical, printed materials is now moved to a digital environment via a user-friendly interface on this platform.

From October 2020, which is the start of the season, to December 2020, 10 live and playback BIPO concerts, as well as two live Borusan Quartet Concerts aired on Borusan Klasik. Video records of the concerts continue to be released on borusansanat. tv, which was launched on January 3, 2021, periodically.

Borusan Sanat has actively used its radio channel, Borusan Klasik, in parallel with the circumstances of the period. On Borusan Klasik, artists, artists' representatives, and groups who are unable to get together with their viewers physically at Borusan Music House reach out to audiences with alternative voices through special programs aired at 11:00 pm every Friday. In addition, the thematic program named "BIPO Marathon" offered the records of the most admired BIPO concerts every day at 7:00 pm from December 29 to January 3. The program featured conductor Diego Matheuz, violinist Leticia Moreno; conductor Ryan McAdams and soprano Corinne Winters; conductor Gürer Aykal, pianist Denis Kozhukhin, well-known piano duo Katia and Marielle Labèque; conductor Lorenzo Viotti, clarinet player Andreas Ottensamer; conductor Sascha Goetzel and soprano Ailyn Pérez. "BIPO Marathon" reached audiences with 6 recorded concerts on Borusan Klasik and made a huge hit among people.

Borusan Sanat plans to continue these projects in the 2021 operating period as well.

BORUSAN CONTEMPORARY
Borusan Contemporary is an associated institution of Borusan Kocabıyık Foundation, which is a subsidiary of Borusan Holding. Since September 2011, Borusan Contemporary contributes to society as an important actor of the cultural life in Istanbul. Offering a multi-platform program of exhibitions, events, educational activities, new commissions, and site-specific installations, Borusan Contemporary Art Collection spans 30 years of collecting. It is located in Perili Köşk (the Haunted Mansion), one of the iconic buildings of Istanbul, and is open to the public during weekends.

Borusan Contemporary has offered sustainable programs consisting of new media artworks, exhibitions of site-specific installations, events, and training courses for the past 10 years, and continued to do so in 2020 despite the COVID-19 pandemic, coming together with art lovers via digital platforms.

In 2007, Borusan Group rented and restored Yusuf Ziya Pasha Mansion, aka Perili Köşk (The Haunted Mansion), and positioned it as the Headquarters of the Group. As the building was designed as an office, exhibition areas and training rooms were integrated with the office infrastructure, offering viewers a different corporate arts center experience. Borusan Contemporary’s core activity is preparing exhibitions that are curated from the Borusan Contemporary Art Collection and temporary exhibitions that focus on new media art, and organizing shows with guest curators and artists included in the collection. The institution also works to boost the international recognition of Turkey's natural and cultural heritage through regular commissions to artists; support practices linked with art writing and contemporary art theories for the formation of art memory in Turkey; and release publications on this subject while organizing training programs for children.

Borusan Contemporary plans extensive education programs, and events designed for children aged between 5-12, and adults. Through these programs, Borusan Contemporary welcomes 14 thousand visitors on average each year. 3,266 people visited the Haunted Mansion from January to March 2020, prior to the suspension of physical gatherings due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Starting from March, efforts gained speed to present viewers exhibition programs via the use of new opportunities that are brought along by digital means. Within this scope, Bill Viola: Impermanence - the first temporary exhibition opened in September 2019 - was moved to Borusan Contemporary's account on Google Arts&Culture Platform and launched together with a supplementary digital exhibition guide specially designed for the exhibition. In the meantime, information on past exhibitions on the platform (Universal Everything: Fluid Bodies, Üvercinka, Mika Tajima: Æther and a special selection for the platform, curated from Borusan Contemporary Art Collection) was updated and presented to 66,491 art lovers from March to December 2020.

The collection named Düş Suda (Dream on the Water), slated for launch in March 2020 but then was postponed due to the quarantine measures, was digitized in a virtual tour format and presented to Borusan employees in a special screening session.

Alternative spaces were considered since the Haunted Mansion was closed to physical visits. Therefore, a photo exhibition curated from Borusan Contemporary Art Collection was presented to viewers at the venue of the 212 Photography Istanbul Festival, held from October 8 to 18, in Akaretler Row Houses. 3 thousand people visited the venue. In addition, BITTER MEDICINE #02, an exhibition created by a duo, mentalKLINIK (Yasemin Baydar, Birol Demir), offering a "bitter medicine" to the art world forced to change under the COVID-19 pandemic conditions was broadcast live 24/7 at the exhibition venue within the Belgrade Contemporary Arts Museum in September 2020. After this first edition, the exhibition was moved to Borusan Contemporary Haunted Mansion in the same month. Live on Borusan Contemporary's website 24/7, the exhibition was presented to viewers until January 31, 2021. The exhibition was viewed 12,600 times on phones, tablets, and PCs from September to December 2020.

Furthermore, "BITTER MEDICINE Online Conversations,” organized in three sessions with the participation of international players of art scenes, was streamed on the YouTube channel of Borusan Contemporary as part of the BITTER MEDICINE #02 temporary exhibition. During the temporary exhibition, Executive Director of Sanatatak Platform, Ayşegül Sönmez had four live broadcasts on the Instagram account of Sanatatak where she hosted artists with artworks included in Borusan Contemporary Art Collection and tackled different approaches to color. This content reached hundreds of users on digital channels.

Children's Workshops, once held in person, were postponed for a certain time period since the institution was closed to physical visits. Preparations for an infrastructure to reach children via digital platforms were completed. In this period, a special digital workshop for the children of Borusan employees was organized on April 23 Children's Day, in coordination with the Corporate Communications team of Borusan Holding.

n July 2018, Borusan Contemporary launched Borusan Contemporary Blog to encourage the conception of new ways of thinking on New Media Art. Regularly enhanced with new content, the Blog continued to grow its readership and reached 100 thousand art readers as of August. Borusan Contemporary Blog features articles on collections and exhibitions, readings of artworks, and interviews with artists and curators on a monthly basis. Aiming to contribute to media art literacy, Borusan Contemporary Blog is designed in a manner to enhance artistic and curatorial perspectives.

In addition, Borusan Contemporary Art Collection offers many domestic and international artists invited the chance to create new artworks. Commissions under projects and artwork creations will help shed a light on Turkey's cultural heritage and current problems faced in the country. These will also serve as a means to document and encourage discussions on, these issues. Commissioned to the leading figures of contemporary arts, such works provide a chance for inter-cultural transitions and re-interpretations, while developing a contemporary perspective into cultural assets with historical value.

In 2020, Borusan Contemporary's exhibitions and the artworks included in Borusan Contemporary Art Collection were viewed by 6,266 people physically and 78,491 people via digital means. It is rare to see corporations willing to share their headquarters with the public. Borusan Contemporary opens to arts audience for weekend visits at the Haunted Mansion, which demonstrates the importance Borusan Group places on transparency.

Borusan Group is aware of the power and vital place culture and arts have in society and has made it a mission to raise interest in arts and expand the means to access culture in its activities through Borusan Contemporary.