THE FROG KING'S den is a dark warren filled with the detritus of the city. Broken car parts, empty cereal boxes, discarded clothes, a child's inflatable toy and - unusually - old bras, dozens of them. They hang from hooks, are stuffed into corners darkened with dust or lie on shelves yawning under the weight of such a bizarre collection. It could easily be mistaken for a squalid bedsit or a rag-and-bone man's yard. But the Frog King's obsessive-compulsive need to pick up any old rubbish he comes across is driven by an artistic muse. 'My goal is to turn the mundane and the discarded into something spiritual, something beautiful and something meaningful,' he says, adding another ink-saturated wad of tissue to a disturbing collection of objects he has crafted into a huge creation called Toilet Roll Installation. It's an odd tableau, but one not out of place in the Cattle Depot Artist Village where the Frog King, alias veteran artist Kwok Mang-ho, has his outlandish studio. Home to a collective of 19 artistic 'entities' (art groups and individuals housed in private studios), the village is a hive of modern artistic energy producing some of Hong Kong's most groundbreaking painting, sculpture, filmmaking and photography. It is housed in a converted Victorian-era compound of red-brick buildings and sheds that was once the customs and excise office's livestock quarantine station. Bounded by a hideous gas plant, a major road, abandoned scrubland and collapsing homes in the heart of shabby Kowloon City, it doesn't strike the layman as the kind of place where artists could find a creative home. But within walls with bricks loosened by age, among lichen-covered stone-paved alleys and under bamboo-tiled roofs, some of Hong Kong's artistic stars of the future are incubating their talents. 'It really is a fantastic place to be based because it's quiet and calm and just has this great creative vibe,' says Ronnie Shum, 27, a film director by profession but a self-confessed 'idle artist' in his spare time who is happy to work in whichever medium takes his fancy. 'There is nothing like it anywhere else in Hong Kong.' It's easy to get lost among the labyrinth of decrepit back streets in Kowloon City, tucked between the disused runway of Kai Tak and an elbow in the north shore of Victoria Harbour. As such, the Cattle Depot Artist Village is a little-known gem, more the kind of operation you'd find in a European city. But the collective hopes such anonymity will be a thing of the past as it opens its doors to the public for a festival of the artists' work. The Summer Days And Nights Arts Festival, which opened on Friday and runs until Tuesday's public holiday, takes the best of each tenant's work and shows it to a public that as yet knows little of the village. 'We'd like to demonstrate just what we can do in our village,' says co-ordinator Bobby Sham Ka-ho. 'As well as providing premises for our artists to work and create, the Cattle Depot is also a potential tourist attraction. It's unique in Asia and helps dispel the idea that Hong Kong is a cultural wasteland.' A piece of music has been created and conducted especially for the event by composer Young Kar-fai. The piece is accompanied by a film by acclaimed video artist Ellen Pau, the artistic director of new media arts collective Videotage, one of the village's commercially most successful tenants. There is a wealth of exhibitions in the various barns - from photography to installation and video art. There are also interactive exhibits in which visitors can create their own art. Although there have been earlier festivals, this year's is the most ambitious and illustrates how far the collective has come since its inception in the mid-1990s. It was conceived by a group of artists, including the highly praised arts collective 1A Space, as a sanctuary where artists could work in an atmosphere of intense creativity. The collective managed to convince the government to allow them to set up shop in a disused supply stores building in Oil Street, North Point. By the late 1990s the artists were making headlines with their controversial exhibitions, shows and parties. Paying just a peppercorn rent to a government that was happy to let out what had been an empty liability, they were able to do their work free of the financial worries of many a struggling artists. By 1999, however, they were moved on when a developer indicated it was keen to snap up the property. 'But we wouldn't let it go,' said video artist May Fung, one of the collective's original members and its negotiator with the government. 'We didn't leave until we really had to and even then we kept badgering the government to provide us with another place.' After much searching, the artists turned themselves into an action group called the Oil Street Artist Village and found the disused livestock station in Kowloon City. 'It was ideal for us. It was not too far from the city but far enough to not really be of much interest to any big developer. I know how to work the government and so we made our approaches to the right people and they let us rent it,' says Fung. 'And I have to say, the government did us proud. Considering the amount of trouble we gave them, they really were very good with us.' Stepping into the old depot is like walking into an old Chinese walled village. With a six-metre perimeter wall shutting out the screeching brakes, whirring air-cons and gunning engines of the roads outside, the village is as placid as the Forbidden City. Built at the turn of the last century there is an almost gothic charm in the gabled roofs and aged red bricks. The buildings inside and the public paths are edged with stone troughs where the beasts imported from China would sip their last drop of water before being carted off to the abattoir. It's a grisly history that gives the compound's present-day activities something of an edge. 'From death, we are creating life, I suppose,' says Shum. The Summer Days And Nights Arts Festival runs from today until Tuesday, 11am-11pm. Today: Cultural Flea outdoor art exhibition starts at 2pm, Yummy Yummy Theatre is on from 4pm-5pm, and the Hong Kong Classic Film Show, 8pm-10pm. Cattle Depot Artist Village, 63 Ma Tau Kok Road, To Kwa Wan, Kowloon. Inquiries: telephone 2234 6478