Visual Arts Education in Face of Hong Kong’s Cultural Policy (or its lack of) – a Revelation from the HKBU Kai Tak Campus Incident

The Academy of Visual Arts (AVA), Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) was established in 2004. A year later, its Bachelors of Visual Arts program commenced. In 2006, the University rent an eighty-year-old colonial building from the government, which was to become the “Kai Tak Campus” of HKBU. When the campus’s lease expired in 2012, the government decided to hike the once “symbolic” rent to the “market” price of $300,000 per month. University Management planned to relocate the AVA to the main campus but the alumni and the students of AVA protested against the proposal. They founded the “HKBU AVA Campus Development Concern Group”, collected signatures, organized open days, forums and docent tours as well as charity auction, and took part in the July 1st protest. The government finally consented not to raise the rent so that tenancy could extend for one more year. By firstly introducing the article “A policy-less Cultural Policy – Government-led Cultural Activities in Colonial Hong Kong” by Chow Fan-fu, the writer proposes that Hong Kong put its emphasis on performing art and understates visual arts. She then discusses three revelations of the Kai Tak Campus incident as being: 1. fundamental procedural injustice; 2. the colonial mentality of Hong Kong’s visual arts education; and 3. change can only be brought about through a civil society.