2024/25 CUHK Knowledge Transfer Fund |

[Project Description] The world-famous artists and musicians performing in Hong Kong every year have inspired many young people to be interested in musical performance. However, while they take it as an extracurricular or leisure activity, pursuing a professional music career is a much harder path, especially in the start-up stage. Significant effort has been put into bringing world-class performances, yet emerging artists are less supported in opportunity and space of public performance, which is a critical barrier to young musicians needing exposure and experience to grow. The compact urban condition in Hong Kong consists of a wide spectrum of urban spaces for public use, but they are usually designed as generic places and underutilised. These types of spaces, many owned by private developers, are valuable resources that can support artistic performances and enrich the community’s cultural life. However, property owners lack incentives to allocate space for young performers due to undefined corporate benefits and limited organisational channels and capacity.

To address the above issues, this impact-driven project will identify spatial resources and match them with aspiring local musicians, building upon the team’s professional expertise and the PI’s research in infrastructure for cultural development in Hong Kong. Through an innovative framework with an outcomes-driven design and measurement approach, this project aims to create a platform that links artists and property owners in a mutually beneficial manner. The aspiration of creating “start-up spaces” for musicians is to grow into a sustainable support network for emerging musicians while activating urban space and providing property owners with quantified social outcomes for CSR and ESG reporting purposes. In a broader view, this project will also benefit general public space users and contribute to the cultural development in Hong Kong.

This project builds upon the PI’s research in public space and cultural infrastructure development in Hong Kong, which provides knowledge on the cultural ecosystem and its relationship to spatial issues. One key finding in past research is that the spatial quality of current small/residual public space has a strong potential to be associated with cultural programs beyond the predetermined use (2020 – experience cultural space). In addition, the current research (2022 – cultural infrastructure) identifies the need to create a network of public space resources for cultural use. Both are being addressed through this program to implement for social impact and evaluate with outcome measurement.

Furthermore, the partnership of the PI and the CUHK team member in the urban design studio has resulted in a design-thinking methodology – the “Urban Collaboratives” – to conduct spatial transformation projects towards creating social impact. Various tactical design strategies are tested through student projects, and the result is published and exhibited with international exposure, such as the 2023 Venice Biennale satellite event “Time Space Existence”.

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PROJECT TEAM:

• PROJECT LEADER: Prof.Melody Yiu @ School of Architecture, CUHK
• Programming and Music-preneur Training: Irene Au @KALOS
• Project Management and Impact Measurement: Jessica Cheung & Chris Chau @Outcome Lab
• Space Design: Veera Fung @AtelierIn
• Branding and Publicity: Salina Chu @WhateverWorkshop

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