When the HK$21.6 billion West Kowloon Cultural District is fully up and running in 2031, 15 venues with grandiose architecture will grace the skyline of the 40 hectares of reclaimed land.
Before that, by 2015, 12 venues are slated to offer up to 24,400 seats for assorted cultural programmes. However, there are already doubts about whether those seats can be filled. The question is how to cultivate an audience to ensure a steady stream of faithful patrons.
Last Saturday, 600 arts practitioners, officials, students and members of the community gathered in the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts at an open public forum to listen to eight renowned arts and museum directors on how to make the West Kowloon Cultural District a success. The forum was initiated by businessman and cultural critic Sir David Tang Wing-cheung and included the South China Morning Post as a supporter.
Julia Peyton-Jones, of the Serpentine Gallery in London, and Mark Jones, of the Victoria and Albert Museum, complimented the city on its commitment to developing all the venues in one go, which they described as 'unique', saying cultural districts in other parts of the world took decades to build up. Patrons are expected to come from across the Pearl River Delta, so experts predict the West Kowloon Cultural District will serve a population as large as that of Britain.
However, Tim McFarlene, managing director of the Really Useful Company Asia Pacific, which is owned by Andrew Lloyd Webber, wondered whether too much was planned for the initial stage. He pointed out that it would be a challenge to find audiences and programmes to fill the venues. Mathias Woo Yan-wai, executive director of experimental theatre company Zuni Icosahedron, said an audience could only be cultivated with proper arts education.
A spokeswoman for the Education Bureau said the government had taken the initiative to tackle that. 'Starting from the 2009-10 school year, students at the senior secondary level will spend at least 135 hours of total curriculum time on learning arts, and music and visual arts are offered as elective subjects,' she said.
