West Kowloon Young Fellows Scheme (Performing Arts) 2020 — Awarded Fellows

West Kowloon Cultural District is pleased to announce the two awardees of the 2020 Young Fellows Scheme: drama educator and immersive theatre creator Onnie Chan On-yin, and arts practitioner, researcher and writer Leung Ho-yin.

A sharing session will be held with both fellows after the completion of their projects. Details to be announced in early 2021.

Onnie Chan On-yin

Drama educator Onnie Chan On-yin is the founder and artistic director of Banana Effect, a Hong Kong theatre group specialising in immersive game theatre productions for audiences of all ages. In 2015, she led the establishment of BE KIDS, a branch of Banana Effect focused on interactive puppet performances.

Onnie graduated from The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts with a Bachelor of Arts in Acting. After working as a full-time actor at the Hong Kong Repertory Theatre from 2009 to 2011, she moved to London to study at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. In 2017, Onnie was awarded a Yale-China Arts Fellowship by the Yale-China Association and the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office to develop the immersive theatre project Never Stand Still.

Committed to drama education, Onnie has provided training for the Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui and the Hong Kong Chinese Culture Development Association, and worked with The Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups and the Hong Kong Youth Arts Foundation to host storytelling and drama workshops for teenagers, parents and teachers. She has also conducted workshops and seminars for The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, the City University of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Design Institute.

Project Outline: Fun Time for Single-parent Families
Pressured by long working hours, many parents in Hong Kong struggle to give their children as much time and attention as they would like and parent-child relationships can suffer as a result. For single parents, the pressures can be even more acute. Having witnessed her own mother’s struggles, Onnie is keen to explore ways to use her professional and personal experience to help single parents build closer, stronger relationships with their children, and in 2019 she led the Banana Effect project You are absent and what does that mean? exploring how the absence of a father can affect children in the course of growing up.

For the Fellows project, Onnie builds on her past work and experience, and explores storytelling as a simple and effective way to enhance parent-child bonds and create open communication. Working closely with single parents, social service organisations and child psychologists, she will conduct drama workshops and interviews to research the challenges faced by single-parent families and their support needs. From this, and secondary research, Onnie will develop an interactive toolkit based on storytelling and drama techniques to help parents engage more easily with their children, enhance and personalise storytelling routines and improve heart-to-heart communication.

Project Summary
The report summary of the project is available for download below.

Leung Ho-yin

Photo by Homan Fan

Leung Ho-yin is an arts practitioner, researcher and writer with an interest in arts and social engagement, social science and creative methodologies. He is currently working on a book on the artwork created by Vietnamese boat people in detention camps in Hong Kong in the late 1980s.

Ho-yin obtained his Master of Philosophy in History of Chinese Art from The Chinese University of Hong Kong and is currently a member of the Diversity, Equity and Social Inclusion Research Group at The Education University of Hong Kong. Prior to this, he assisted Professor Frank Vigneron in designing an internship programme focused on arts and social engagement for the Department of Fine Arts at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and conducted research on local ecological art with the Wanwu Practice Group led by Dr Zheng Bo from the School of Creative Media at the City University of Hong Kong. Ho-yin participated as an artist in Hak Hak Jap at the Rooftop Institute (2019) and was assistant curator for the art space Neptune from 2016 to 2018. In 2018, he was selected as an emerging art professional by Hong Kong’s contemporary art centre Para Site. He is also a contributor to a number of arts publications, including The Art Newspaper, City Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, Paratext and Ran Dian.

Project Outline: “Yau Lok, Ng-goi” – The Music of Minibus Drivers in Hong Kong
Minibuses are an iconic part of Hong Kong’s public transport landscape. Everyone in the city has personal memories connected to rides that can often be memorable sonic journeys as well. Even a short ride will be marked by the sounds of passengers talking on phones or shouting to get off, by radio broadcasts or by the songs on the driver’s playlist. How does this soundscape affect how we connect to the people travelling with us? To what extent are minibuses also personal performative spaces for the drivers – like travelling live houses?

Inspired by personal and artistic experiences, Leung Ho-yin’s “Yau Lok, Ng-goi”, is an interdisciplinary research project that investigates the demographics of Hong Kong’s minibus driver community and the idea of minibuses as community spaces where passengers and drivers are connected through a shared soundscape. By researching drivers’ playlists and music tastes, and documenting personal stories in published writings and recordings, Ho-yin hopes to open up new connections between drivers and passengers and new perspectives on minibuses as spaces for shared music experiences.

Project Summary