It seems strange that the Tate Modern is one of the most popular attractions in the UK, with over one million visitors last year, and yet very few documentary films are made about the world of painting and the arts. The Company of Adventurers intends to bring alive some of the most exciting and original stories about artists and their works and bring an appreciation of the arts to a much wider audience.

There is plenty of evidence of interest in the arts, such as the great popularity of the recent Rolf Harris series about great painters and their masterpieces. There are a large number of people who have an active or passing interest in painting and sculpture and the other fine arts, as demonstrated by the vast number of evening classes in these subjects. The arts provide a vast and varied world of subjects including topics as different as tesselatery (mosaics), textiles, fashion, ice sculpture, mime and street performance. The Company intends to approach all these subjects with new ideas and a new vision, and to make important and groundbreaking programmes about the arts.

The Company enjoys excellent links to artists, galleries, auction houses and other organisations involved in the arts. It's documentary films will address subject matter ranging from the paintings looted by the Nazis, iconography in late Roman mosaics, the story of a portrait being painted, and the sources of inspiration of one of the world's most controversial sculptors.

These stories provide the subject matter for documentary films with colour, texture and immediacy, films that will inspire interest in their subjects and participation in the arts, and which will form an important strand in the creative output of the Company.