WHAT IS PUBLIC VALUE?
In the context of the creative arts, ‘public value’ refers to the tangible and intangible benefits that art and creative expression bring to society as a whole (Hjort & Nannicelli 2022). The term encompasses the transformative impact of artistic projects on policy formation, societal well-being, and cultural exchange, with a focus on promoting inclusivity, diversity, and social transformation. Public value in the context of the RCCAPV is manifested through the creation of spaces for imaginative discussions of pressing societal issues, the enhancement of human flourishing through the design and implementation of inclusive art environments, and the promotion of cross-cultural, policy-oriented dialogue on the role of art in empowering marginalised voices. Ultimately, public value in the realm of creative arts research is about leveraging the power of art to inspire positive change, advocate for social betterment, and contribute to the overall well-being and resilience of individuals and communities.
The premise of the RCCAPV is that creative arts practices and the opportunity to be meaningfully involved with the arts (as a professional, amateur, full-blown participant or sometime practitioner, or as an audience member with varying degrees of artistic experience and understanding) are fundamental to the creation of a ‘good society’. Creative arts practices can be profoundly creative in an extended sense, articulating new ideas, offering new concepts, encouraging reflection and deeper self-understandings, and forging the spaces needed for productive social transformation to occur. This transformative potential of the creative arts is especially important in the context of the RCCAPV. The RCCAPV will focus on creative arts research, practice-based research, impactful public performance, and the incubating of public dialogue on the value of the arts for social transformation.
The Context
HONG KONG, MAINLAND CHINA, AND EDUHK
Five strands of policy thinking inform the vision for the RCCAPV
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The first of these strands is the HKSAR government’s vision, powerfully expressed in the ambitious development of the West Kowloon Cultural District, for a society in which art, broadly construed, enriches the lives of Hong Kongers. The concept of art as a highly desirable public good has been transformative for Hong Kong since the Handover of 1997. For example, this concept underpins the development, over a period of two decades, of the West Kowloon Cultural District. With its distinctive performance venues and museums—the Xiqu Centre, the Palace Museum, and M+—the West Kowloon Cultural District is one of countless examples of how Hong Kong’s identity is being reshaped, even at the infrastructural level, to embrace values and practices associated with the world of art. While some of these values and practices—those of the auction houses and art markets—support Hong Kong’s well established identity as a global financial centre, others resonate with a more expansive understanding of what citizens need to live good lives. What is undeniable is the central role that various conceptions of art has played in the reinvention of Hong Kong in the postcolonial era.
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The HKSAR government’s clear emphasis on the need, for a variety of reasons, to give priority to initiatives that will enhance East-West Cultural Exchange is the second strand. At a time when the value of the creative arts is being questioned in parts of the West, the RCCAPV seeks dialogue between the East and the West for the purposes of developing culturally sensitive, historically informed, and grand-challenge-style conceptions of how the creative arts can and should contribute to the creation of public value.
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“Art Tech” as a strategic area for Hong Kong’s development, one meriting considerable investment and support, is a third enabling strand. With Hong Kong’s commitment to Art Tech (as initially expressed in then Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s 2020 Policy Address) and with the ongoing development of the East Kowloon Cultural Centre, there is an opportunity, in the EdUHK context, to establish a robust, internationally recognised research environment devoted to the idea that art, both in its traditional and in its more recent, technology-assisted forms, transforms and improves lives, contributing, in effect, public value to society.
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The government of Mainland China’s strategic emphasis on inclusion, as evidenced in such projects as the Guangming Cinema Audio-descriptive Movie Making and Promotion Project, which responds to the call for the “protection and development of disabled people during the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25)” offers a fourth enabling framework for research on the creative arts in a public value context.
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EdUHK’s pivot from an ‘Education Plus’ concept to the idea of ‘Education Futures’ in its most recent strategic plan provides a fifth context of relevance. The choice of ‘Education Futures’ as a core term highlights EdUHK’s institutional commitment to developing educational approaches and curricula that are more than future-proof. ‘Education Futures’ is also about forging futures that are well worth aspiring to, well worth affirming. In this aspirational dimension, one encompassing the idea of envisioning and transforming, we find a natural fit with the mission that the RCCAPV aims to pursue.