Hong Kong: Creative Ecologies - Business, Living, Creativity Foreword by Chief Curator – Kai-Yin Lo

This exhibition aims at showcasing the Hong Kong’s creative power, its outstanding design and designers. Design is ultimately an expression of innovation and creativity that enhances our quality of life. It not only builds communities through urban planning and architecture, it enhances our everyday enjoyment through interior and product design. Design also adds value to business for both customers and stakeholders and heightens the competitiveness of a city. Last but not least, design generates a sense of shared camaraderie, an awareness of the need for sustainability and a pride of place and sense of belonging.

Having grown from a manufacturing base into a global financial and service powerhouse, Hong Kong is now steadily forging a reputation as a highly creative design and design management hub. Celebrating “creative ecologies”, this exhibition explores Hong Kong’s creative DNA and explains how social, cultural, economic and geographic factors have and are continuing to shape the Territory. We will also look at how these factors have made Hong Kong a magnet for international talent as well as an incubator for some of Asia’s most progressive designers and creative service enterprises.

Ecology is a concept that comes from nature and is derived from the Greek word which means the study of living relationships or ecosystems. According to innovation expert John Howkins who pioneered the term “creative economy” in 2002, the keys to developing a creative ecology are talent, freedom and markets. Hong Kong possesses all three of these qualities in abundance.

Our people’s fertile and flexible approach to doing business rests upon very strong human and built capital. Specific attributes include a high standard of governance, freedom of expression, a sound infrastructure and an unrivalled location. Right at the mouth of the Pearl River Delta, Hong Kong is only an hour or so away from 100 million of China’s newly affluent population and 30% of the country’s top exporters. We are also no more than five hours by air from every major city in Asia, therefore near to markets, people and supplies.

As China and Asia continue to strive for growth, there remains a great need to nurture talent and innovation and further enhance our competitiveness. There also exists an urgent need for more constructive interaction between the creative and business communities and importantly, more visionary thinking from the government.

Creativity is often confused with newness for newness’ sake. For truly innovative individuals it means having the courage to venture bravely forth into unknown fields where no one has ever trodden before. To paraphrase Einstein, innovation and creativity is “seeing new things with old eyes” and daring to “see what others see while thinking what no one has thought”.

Thematic Zone One: “Creative Hong Kong”
The first thematic zone projects a visual and conceptual introduction of the networks and influences that make up Hong Kong’s “Creative Ecologies”.

• Creative Environment ~ The keyword is “Buzz”. Our vibrant and cosmopolitan lifestyle is based on freedom of ideas and expression, openness and inclusiveness, an East-West cultural mix aided by low taxation and flexible access to capital, and a global exposure through communications, ideas, and opportunities.
• Creative Entrepreneurship ~ The keyword is “Speed and Flexibility”. It can be seen in the fast reflexes and resourcefulness with which successful entrepreneurs build businesses.
• Creative Competence ~ The keyword is “Efficiency and Reliability”. We know what it takes to deliver world-standard services with our highly developed human capital, the rule of law, intellectual property protection, a low tax regime and efficient infrastructure, offering a secure and reliable platform for the development and launch of new design, products and systems.
• Creative Thinking and Expression legally enshrined ~ The keyword is “Experimentation”. Hong Kong is a free port of ideas as well as goods and services. Such freedom creates an environment conducive to creative experimentation and cross-pollination.
• Creative Connections ~ The keyword is “Connectivity”. Hong Kong enjoys easy access not only to the Pan-Pearl River Delta, but also to the world. Our highly efficient international airport is within a five-hour range to major Asian cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore, Bangkok, and New Delhi. This means Hong Kong is close to major markets for services, goods, people and ideas.
• Creative Talent ~ The keyword is “Magnet”. Hong Kong attracts international and regional talents with its low taxation, business and manufacturing opportunities. These creative migrants bring with them an infusion of new energy, know how and in turn stimulate our own creative community.

Thematic Zone Two: The Creative Landscape
The second thematic zone presents viewers with a macroscopic overview of 7 Hong Kong enterprises that have used design in innovative ways. We profile 39 of Hong Kong’s best and most iconic designers in 5 groupings – Legacy Innovators, Image Builders, Urban Culture Interpreters, Brand Creators and International Talents. Through recent efforts of the Hong Kong Designer Centre, the Trade Development Council and Invest Hong Kong, and of course, the growth of opportunities in China and Asia, many overseas-based Hong Kong born and bred designers who have found international success, now based in New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Athens, London, Beijing or Shanghai, are being drawn back to their home city. In celebrating their roots, they are inspiring a new generation of Hong Kong designers with their know how, global insights and fresh vision.

Thematic Zone Three: “A Better Tomorrow” - The Future Generation
Fifty seven young designers have been invited to present their own creative solutions to identical sculptures that convey cheerful confidence – created by Danny Yung of Zuni Icosahedron. The installation presents variations on the theme of “a better tomorrow” as an expression of youthful energy/inventing spirit and aspirations by designers on the rise to recognition and stardom a compelling statement of the new creative power.