SPARK Festival 2021

EVENT DESCRIPTION

The trailblazing British Council SPARK festival of creativity returns, celebrating connections and inclusion in our communities and offering a platform for cultural exchange between Hong Kong and the UK across arts, education and the English language.

With its debut in 2019 at Tai Kwun, this second edition of SPARK has moved ONLINE presenting the best in art, music, dance, education and digital culture from over 40 creative partners from Hong Kong and the UK working together to present more than 30 events. A place for creativity, collaboration, and inspirational thinking, SPARK events are free, but some require pre-registration.

To be as inclusive and reach as wide and diverse an audience as possible, each SPARK programme has particular accessibility features. For more information and to book, please see here.

This year’s innovative programme is arranged into four themes:

Cloud Piazza
A space for knowledge exchange, debate and interactions.

Create your own pixel-style avatar and join interactive multimedia gathering to.gather, a collaboration between Rooftop Productions (Hong Kong) and Sydenham Arts (UK), for the opportunity to explore a unique, contemporary digital space.

Punch in words on your mind and co-create a digital art piece on Radicals, an online public art-making platform, in collaboration with the Education University of Hong Kong and Edinburgh Napier University.

Novel Dimensions
Break out from physical limitations with events that enable new virtual experiences.

Join UK artist Gary Woodley and Hong Kong’s new media art organisation Videotage for Leave Your Body, a virtual artists’ residency on video gaming platform Minecraft.

Get your dancing shoes on with the UK’s Magpie Dance in association with Arts with the Disabled Association Hong Kong, for live interactive dance sessions and inclusive dance tutorials choreographed, performed and taught by people with learning disabilities, inspiring people of all abilities and ages to get ready to dance.

Immerse yourself in Sound Envelope HK-London, a sound-based immersive experience featuring audio field recordings and soundscapes from Hong Kong and London, co-created by students from City University of Hong Kong and Wimbledon College of Arts, University of the Arts London.

Common Good
Inclusion and accessibility are at SPARK’s core.

Join Hong Kong’s Enable Foundation collaborating with UK creatives Ali Hodgson and Pascal Anson and the National Innovation Centre for Ageing, Newcastle University for animations, workshops and an online forum as part of the OK Dementia™ Festival to learn more about dementia and get ready for a future where the stigma of dementia is lifted.

Tune in to Both Sides Now: Queer, a series of films and talks from Hong Kong and the UK, exploring aspects of LGBTQI+ life, reflecting upon Queer identity, life and creativity. With videoclub (UK), Videotage (Hong Kong), Arts Council England and Hong Kong Arts Development Council.

Bridging Cities
Bridge geographical gaps for cultural understanding and exchange.

Get ready to be teleported between London and Hong Kong by Wind and Foster’s interactive dance film Twin Cities, featuring dancers from Hong Kong Ballet and London’s Tavaziva dance company.

Enter Memory Palace, a short film by Hong Kong artist Dorothy Cheung, to experience a series of moving images exploring memories attached to the personal objects of ethnic Chinese people in Manchester.

Discover Music as An Adventure, an online piano recital and talk with Hong Kong born and bred pianist Anson Tang, who uses a wheelchair, and Professor Nigel Clayton, Anson’s mentor and piano professor at the Royal College of Music London, as they disclose the innermost emotions within a performer’s soul.