Jake's ViewGive arts job creation plea the brush-off
Pitch for more money for culture hub needs more work if the best the turtleneck sweater set can come up with is the spurious employment line
… Hong Kong needs new industries that can help drive the local economy. The creative sector can do just that.
Art boosts businesses such as art transportation, storage, insurance and educational facilities as well as, potentially, jobs. And those jobs have a positive impact on society, economically and culturally. Shouldn't the government play a part in nurturing this young and growing industry?
It's generally a sign of someone scraping the bottom of the barrel when you hear the argument brought up that we ought to do something because it will create jobs.
It also seems too late this time. Chief Secretary Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor has apparently turned down the West Kowloon Cultural District's pleas for more money and told it to get along on its existing HK$21.6 billion budget. Thus the M+ art museum will get only its allotted HK$1 billion for acquisitions.
It's so unfair. How does Carrie expect anyone to survive on a mere billion? That's hardly enough to keep art brokers … oops, excuse me, I mean curators … in turtleneck sweaters. Hong Kong will never be a world class arts centre this way.