2016 Nomination of Representatives of Art Interests for the HKADC

The 2016 Nomination of Representative of Art Interest for Hong Kong Arts Development Council (HKADC) was held in November, 2016. The nomination exercise has been taking place since 1997 and was organized every three years (every two years before 2001). The last one (i.e. 2013) started to attract more attention from art practitioners and media. A registration system reform is introduced in 2016, requiring all eligible arts organizations to re-register and the voter criteria were tightened. The total number of registered voters (including individual and group voters) was 5864, lowest since 2007, though the number of registered individual voters increased from 989 in the last nomination exercise to 2254 this year. Some voters expressed that they had not received voting notice and candidate information even in the polling week. Suspicious seeding votes were reported by the media. Six representatives of art interests, including that of “Visual Arts,” were contested. Candidates within the same art interest demonstrated sharp difference upon political stand. The results were announced on November 29 and the voter turnout rate increased by eight per cent compared with that of last time. Chan Kam-shing defeated his rival Lam Man-kong and was elected as the Representative of Visual Arts group, serving a new term from January 1, 2017 to December 31, 2019.