Introduction

The Stavros Niarchos Foundation is one of the world’s leading philanthropic organizations. Over the past 30 years, it has committed nearly $4 billion to more than 3,000 grantee partners across 130 countries.

Working across health, education, arts and culture, social welfare, sports, sustainability and civic life, SNF supports people and organizations creating meaningful change. The challenge for foundations is making that impact visible, accessible and engaging beyond reports and grant databases.

Challenge

SNF Nostos is the foundation’s annual public festival at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center in Athens.

For SNF’s 30th anniversary, the foundation wanted a digital experience that could engage families, students, employees, partners, and visitors with different accessibility needs. It needed to communicate the scale of SNF’s global work while placing the achievements and stories of its grantee partners at the center.

The challenge was to present thousands of grants across multiple countries and sectors in a way that felt clear, human and emotionally resonant, without reducing their impact to numbers alone.

Solution

For SNF Nostos 2026, Journey created the festival’s first immersive, interactive experience.

Hosted within the National Library of Greece’s Book Castle, Mapping the SNF Journey transformed more than 5,700 grants into an accessible exploration of SNF’s global reach and real-world impact.

A connected series of digital and physical touchpoints invited visitors to explore the foundation’s history, data, grantee stories, staff voices and future ambitions. Through film, sound, interaction and participation, the experience guided audiences from curiosity and discovery to reflection, bringing 30 years of philanthropy to life through the people and communities behind it.

The Experience

Totems

The visitor journey began with interactive totems that introduced visitors to the experience and guided them through the space. Combining wayfinding, event information and grantee films, they created a first point of curiosity and orientation. Motion capture interaction revealed layers of data and human stories, encouraging visitors to explore the scale and diversity of SNF’s work.

A printed wall graphic provided a clear introduction to SNF, its mission and its global reach, giving visitors the context they needed before entering the more immersive digital moments.

Timeline

The timeline presented SNF’s 30-year journey as a living archive rather than a simple sequence of dates. Designed in dialogue with the spatial rhythm of SNF’s Book Castle collection, the warm, textural wall brought together physical objects, imagery, quotes and film to reveal defining moments from the foundation’s history.

As visitors moved through the collection, they experienced the growing momentum of three decades of philanthropy. By leading with tangible, human stories rather than chronology alone, the archive reflected the collaborative and evolving nature of SNF’s work, helping visitors understand its breadth before exploring grantmaking in greater depth inside the exhibition.

Immersive Digital Canvas 

The centerpiece of the experience was a real-time visualization of SNF’s grantmaking. The immersive film painted the big picture of 30 years of giving, translating complex data into a cinematic overview of global impact. The canvas also became a living data visualization, incorporating visitor responses from Leave Your Mark and making the audience part of the evolving story

Interactive Global Map

The global map allowed visitors to explore SNF’s grants in greater depth through interactive screens. Grantees and their work were visualized across the globe, helping visitors move from global scale to individual case studies and human stories. This was a key technical USP of the project, translating more than 5,700 data points into a spatially mapped, real-time globe visualization with dynamic narrative layers.

For foundations managing large, complex portfolios, this kind of multidimensional visualization makes impact more legible across connected ecosystems. It helps audiences understand not only individual projects, but the relationships between places, sectors, communities and long-term areas of focus.

Leave Your Mark

Leave Your Mark invited visitors to imagine the kind of grants they would like to see actioned in the world. Their responses were collected and translated into a participatory data visualization on the immersive digital canvas. This shifted visitors from observers to contributors, connecting SNF’s history of giving to the audience’s own hopes for future impact. This participatory layer helped create a more open and reciprocal relationship between the foundation and its audiences. It invited visitors to see themselves as part of the conversation, turning impact communication into a shared act of reflection rather than a one-way presentation.

SNF Voices

The experience culminated in SNF Voices, an emotive finale built around the voices of grantee partners and SNF staff. Through cinematic storytelling, visitors were taken on a shared human journey through 30 years of impact. This final moment brought the experience back to a simple idea: behind every grant is a person, a community and a story of change.

Digital App

The experience continued beyond the physical installation through a digital app. Visitors could explore grantee case studies and the global visualization after the event, with new grants added as they were announced. By extending the experience beyond the event, the app created a longer-term engagement platform for SNF’s impact story. It allowed the foundation’s work to continue evolving over time, supporting future learning, stakeholder engagement and continued public connection.