Way of the west

Hong Kong may finally have a HK$19 billion cultural district looming large on the horizon in West Kowloon. But planning and preparing for the mammoth project is, for those at the helm, a step into unfamiliar waters.

'Governing such a thing is highly complex and we definitely need to learn from others,' says Oscar Ho Hing-kay, director of the cultural management programme at Chinese University of Hong Kong.

That's why, together with the Asian Cultural Council, he has invited Martin Vinik, a veteran US arts management consultant, to give a week-long workshop on cultural districts and urban planning to a group of young local arts administrators.

His visit, which ends on Thursday with a public lecture on cultural district planning at the Hong Kong Arts Centre, is part of a long-term exercise initiated by Ho to cultivate and nurture administrative talent for both West Kowloon and the mainland.

Subtitled 'Building Sustainable Structures for the Arts in Developing Cities', the ongoing programme exposes arts administrators accustomed to working in a government-run industry to a more independent, economically viable business model.

Most of the city's performance venues and museums are managed by the Leisure and Cultural Services Department. This arrangement, which has been in place for decades, is expected to change when the first of the district's 15 planned performance venues opens in 2015.

The arts community and the authorities need to focus their attention on how they can prepare for this change and whether they will have enough qualified staff to sustain the new system, he says.

'The question with this kind of planning is: what is the best way to use what are ultimately finite resources?' says Vinik, who has directed long-range planning studies for the John F. Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, Manhattan's 42nd Street Redevelopment District, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and who has helped establish cultural districts in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and St Louis.

'You want to find a way to do it that recognises all the realities of what an arts scene is - which is that it changes, that it is impossible to invent artistic vitality, and that it is impossible to predict artistic success based on market conditions.'

There is no relation between what an arts scene looks like now and what it will look like in 20 years, he says, and administrators must anticipate the fact that companies' needs are going to change and grow.

However, some fundamentals remain the same irrespective of time or location.

Vinik says a city can get the most out of a performance venue by creating an incentive system for its resident production companies to perform.

Rather than offer groups a bargain-basement rental rate (as is the case under the existing system), venue administrators should instead charge them several times that amount and deduct from it every time they mount a public performance.

It's a model that not only creates an incentive for the group to perform often and increase its exposure, but the venue and its ancillary facilities - restaurants, retail stores, even the parking

spaces - all benefit from having crowds come in.

'It's the difference between having what we call 'lit nights' or 'dark nights',' Vinik says.

'Lit nights make money. Dark nights cost money. The goal is to have as many lit nights as you can.'

The same model can be applied to visual arts, he says. 'Only the language is different. Instead of talking about a resident performing arts company to anchor your facility, you're talking about a collection of art.'

With such an extensive facility coming online, the challenge to creating a more vibrant arts scene will no longer be a question of infrastructure itself, but how to utilise it. What will the facilities be used for and who will decide that?

'You can travel to the ends of the Earth to find the right solutions,' Vinik says. 'Ultimately, if you don't have the right people in place, nothing happens,' he says.

'Equally, you can screw up in all kinds of ways [planning a cultural district], but if you have a few people around who are really good, it makes all the difference.'

Ho - who sat on the cultural district advisory board on visual arts - is confident that the eight years before the curtain rises at West Kowloon will be plenty of time to prepare, especially in light of the importance arts administration is now being given.

The Chinese University has been running a cultural management programme since 2001, and the Asian Cultural Council, which begins its 20th anniversary celebrations today, is supporting local expertise in arts administration through grants to curators from the Hong Kong Heritage Museum and the Guangdong Museum of Art, and by supporting Vinik's visit.

'We will absolutely be ready,' Ho says. 'I think Hong Kong can nurture [arts administrators] more easily than other places. Hong Kong people are flexible, they're creative and they're quite global in their thinking.'

Lecture on 'Cultural district planning and public policy: Can we serve business and art at the same time?', Oct 4, 7pm-9pm, Agnes b. Cinema, HK Arts Centre, 2 Harbour Rd, Wan Chai, free. Inquiries: 2895 0407