72nd Board Meeting of West Kowloon Cultural District Authority Held Today

The Board of the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority (WKCDA) held its 72nd meeting today. 
 

WKCDA’s Chief Executive Officer Duncan Pescod was pleased to report that the Ground Breaking Ceremony for the Hong Kong Palace Museum took place yesterday which marked another major milestone for the development of the West Kowloon Cultural District and signifies the commencement of the construction for this new museum. 
 

Alongside the ceremony, a public lecture entitled “The Palace Museum in the Global Cultural Context” was held on 27 May 2018. Dr Shan Jixiang, Director of the Palace Museum, shared his views on the challenges of promoting and developing traditional Chinese culture.
 

For the construction activities on site, the Xiqu Centre has obtained the Occupation Permit last month and now are finishing the fit-out of the Grand Theatre with a view to practical completion in the third quarter of 2018. A Stage Dedication Day and Open Days will be held by the end of this year followed by the formal opening in January 2019.  WKCDA is staging a roving exhibition on the Xiqu Centre in which the general public can gain a greater understanding on the construction progress of the venue which is scheduled for opening in late 2018, as well as its pre-opening programmes. Since May 2018, the exhibition was held in Yuen Long, Causeway Bay and Tseung Kwan O with an accumulated number of visitors reaches over 10,000. The next session will take place at Hong Kong City Hall Central from 8 to 10 June.
 

The M+ construction works continue at a steady pace over the last month. The Art Park continues to progress smoothly. For the Lyric Theatre Complex and relevant part of the integrated basement project, construction activity for the basement and underground road remains ahead of schedule and tendering for the superstructure of the Lyric Theatre Complex is ongoing.
 

Members noted that the revised design of Artist Square Bridge was presented to the Legislative Council Joint Subcommittee to Monitor the Implementation of the West Kowloon Cultural District Project and received broad support from members, and is now pending submission of the funding application to the Public Works Subcommittee (PWSC) and the Finance Committee (FC) by end of this year.
 

On the M+ side, Mr Pescod was pleased to report that the M+ Rover, our travelling creative studio, has received an ‘Award for Arts Education (Non-School Division)’ at the Hong Kong Arts Development Awards 2017, recognizing the outstanding accomplishments in arts education.
 

M+ announced the launch of M+ Live Art, a new biannual series dedicated to performance art, which will feature both established and emerging practitioners. The inaugural exhibition of Audience as Performer, will take place at the Goethe-Institut Hongkong at the Hong Kong Arts Centre from 1 to 3 June 2018.
 

For performing arts, the 4th annual Producers’ Network Meeting & Forum (PNMF) took place in Hong Kong from 18 to 21 May 2018. Under the theme ‘Championing Innovation’, the event started with a public forum, followed by four-day closed-door meeting. The Asia Network for Dance (AND+), a network spearheaded by WKCDA, was launched with the combination of the four elements – Asia, Network, Dance and Connection. The network is dedicated to connecting, developing and empowering contemporary practice in dance within Asia.
 

Specially designed for secondary one to secondary five students, the Screendance School Programme offers guidance on the practice and theory of screendance as a performance discipline. Six demonstration talks took place in April to May, which reached out to around 700 secondary students. A series of one day intensive workshops will take place in June to July.
 

Remarks

About the West Kowloon Cultural District

Located on Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour, the West Kowloon Cultural District is one of the largest cultural projects in the world. Its vision is to create a vibrant new cultural quarter for Hong Kong. With a complex of theatres, performance spaces, and museums, the West Kowloon Cultural District will produce and host world-class exhibitions, performances, and cultural events, and will provide twenty-three hectares of public open space, including a two-kilometre waterfront promenade.