Financial Journalist

WINDOW September 13, 1996

Arts on the fringe

By Gerry O’Kane

HONG KONG has entered a vicious circle familiar the world over: costly productions fail to draw sustainable box office receipts, and more public funding is needed for activities that seem to attract fewer people.

The arts world is casting about for a strategy that will both enrich the lives of people in the territory and excite popular support. At the heart of the issue are the twin problems of funding and education. A small number of arts groups take the dragon’s share of available resources, but that does not guarantee public interest in their activities. And why should people be interested when our schools and colleges seem to consider the arts a side-issue at best, a waste of time at worst?

Is there enough local interest in arts? Reading the weighty papers published in the past six months by various funding authorities reveals yes/no answers at every turn — perhaps unsurprising for a community that grew in size and wealth very quickly. Add to that a clutch of different bureaucracies all trying to figure out what artists themselves want and it is not difficult to see why gauging the level of community interest is difficult.

Planning documents fly thick and fast. The Hong Kong Arts Development Council recently published its five-year strategic plan. And just last month the Urban Council brought out its five-year consultation paper.

Both reflect the same concerns. Indeed, detailed reading shows cross-subsidies going to the largest artistic groups, leaving many smaller music and drama groups scraping the bottom of the money barrel. And there are apparent contradictions: while halls for major performances are in short supply, figures show rehearsal venues run by both the urban and regional councils are underused. And even with rental subsidies, arts groups find venues too expensive and difficult to book. Yet the Academy of Performing Arts, which has world-class facilities, is shown to be standing idle most of the time.

While it is not within Urbco’s remit to concentrate on arts education, its report passingly mentions the need for education to instill an appreciation of the arts. It also speaks of preserving and promoting traditional arts and of the importance of popularization. The HKADC Arts Education Policy Paper, pulling no punches, says “attitudinal barriers to the understanding of, and appreciation for, the arts means that the arts are at best marginalised or at worst ignored.”

Newly-incumbent HKADC chairman Vincent Chow Wing-shing at first indicated an interest in being interviewed but subsequently declined.

Oscar Ho, a former HKADC member and director of the Hung Kong Arts Centre’s arts education, was an author of the five-year plan. “You have to remember Hong Kong is really a city of refugees or children of refugees and as such there is a preoccupation with making money — and art is not seen as necessary.” That explains why this city of 6 million has yet to spawn a commercial theatre, he says. His prescription for getting things moving calls for vastly expanded arts programmes in schools and the introduction of professional programmes for what he calls “middlemen.”

By Ho’s definition, middlemen are the curators, critics, teachers and administrators — the people side of the arts community’s infrastructure. Right now, Hong Kong has no training for any of these professionals. He says, not unreasonably, that generating home-grown talent is vital for nurturing public interest in the arts. Equally, he argues, middlemen are crucial to the artistic community, organising performances and exhibitions and managing venues better. “Why doesn’t Sha Tin run a season of Cantonese opera?” Ho asks. Answer: Sha Tin lacks middlemen.

Noel Ran, manager of the popular Gallery Seven, also worries about education. Most people, he says, simply don’t care about visual arts. “Ho is right about curators and administrators — there is no training for them here.” In another vein, he says: “While young artists can’t find anywhere to exhibit, there are miles of civic centre walls lying bare.”

Specialists
Although the HKADC has its arts education working group within the Education Department, no one has come up with a solution for training art specialists — or finding enough schoolteachers to fill positions. Amazingly, Ho asserts that no art subjects are recognised as credits in the admissions criteria for university entrance in Hong Kong. And, singling out paragraph 44 of the HKADC’s education report, he says that sorry situation is unlikely to change very soon. Notes the report: “At present teachers, parents and principals are quite reluctant to focus on the arts.”

Benny Chia, director of the Fringe Club and a member of the HKADC, agrees that education is important but argues that schooling has become too competitive for students to venture far from traditional career choices. “It’s a sort of rat race,” he says. What Hong Kong really needs is a less stressed-out environment, Chia reckons. “First, we need a healthy community.”

Ho agrees that this is the key. “I feel the community needs to appreciate art, especially if it’s to develop in regard to public bodies,” he says. In other words, if the community at large does not demand more in the way of arts activities, it will be increasingly difficult for bodies like the HKADC and Urbco to funnel money to projects taxpayers care little about. For the moment, funding agencies continue to struggle in this vacuum of apparent public apathy. Both Urbco and the HKADC keep calling for more cash from government to support groups, especially those dependent on heftier subsidies.

At the same time, they have been calling for more private sponsorship. But for all that, the HKADC concedes there is not much hope of raising cash commercially. Urbco mentions it only with regard to Chinese opera productions, which tend to garner good attendance numbers, and the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, which claimed a 74 per cent attendance record last year.

Neither Ho nor Chia see commercial sponsorship as feasible, except in the case of Chinese opera. Oddly enough, the HKADC views developing and preserving Chinese opera as entirely dependent on grants from government, according to its own report. Chia argues that it is impractical for performers to find corporate sponsorship. “Big companies here are just not used to sponsoring the arts,” he says.

Chinese firms traditionally focus on the practical, sponsoring projects like hospitals, according to Ho, though he concedes that local companies show a growing interest in Chinese opera. The big corporate arts funders have been foreign multinationals. But Ho says their interest in Hong Kong is not what it used to be. “This foreign corporate sponsorship has been affected by the [maturing business] market in Hong Kong — and China has taken a fair amount away,” he says. The long and short of it is, if the Hong Kong general public is not interested in attending performances, companies figure they are poor vehicles for promoting corporate identity and products.

The thought of leaving government funding for corporate sponsorship gives Stephen Jefferies the shivers. The Hong Kong Ballet’s artistic director says bluntly: “We simply couldn’t survive on sponsorship, nor on the money taken from performances.”

The company is one of the five performance groups supported by the HKADC. “If we didn’t have that subvention we’d be in trouble,” he says.

Over 1994/95, the Hong Kong Ballet managed average attendances of 75 per cent at Urbco venues. In other years, numbers have dipped below that, and the company has tried to boost them by focusing on school visits to drum up interest. Sounding very much the strategist, Jefferies says the company is always careful to identify “the correct product” to attract interest. Well regarded as the Hong Kong Ballet is, do such groups get an unfairly large slice of the pie? Looking at figures from Urbco, it is difficult to know. By its own admission, it began supporting the arts in the 1970s but “has not yet had the opportunity to consolidate, analyse and review its policies in detail.”

Grants:
Its five-year consultation document offers masses of statistical information but much of it seems open to wide interpretation. For example, it shows cash grants to the Hong Kong Ballet in 1994/95 totalling $4.7 million; it also indicates that of the five shows the group performed in Urbco venues that year, it received subsidies averaging 56 per cent of production costs in at least three instances — money drawn from the 16 per cent of Urbco’s cultural budget set aside for cultural presentations and festivals, to which all arts groups, outside of the big five subverted organisations, must turn for support. (The ballet also received $12.68 million from the HKADC.)

Not that the ballet should be singled out: statistical anomalies, or at least question marks, arise for every group supported by the HKADC and Urbco. What role the Regional Council played in funding is even less certain: its loosely documented annual report for 1995/96 says the council put on 579 cultural presentations, reporting that $437 million was spent on “cultural and entertainment and festivals activities.”

The HKADC supports a total of six professional companies and an information centre. Most of the companies were inherited from the HKADC’s predecessor, the Council for the Performing Arts. The six are the Chung Ying Theatre Co, Exploration Theatre, HK Arts Festival Society, Hong Kong Sinfonietta, City Contemporary Dance, Hong Kong Ballet and the Hong Kong Arts Resource and Information Centre. Each receives year-round support grants, which in 1994/95 totalled $40.2 million, or 59 per cent of the HKADC budget. Those grants do not include extras like project grants for $130,000 to Chung Ying and another $100,000 to the City Contemporary Dance Group.

All of these performing groups also received support from Urbco, and possibly the Regional Council.

Urbco has a lot on its plate: the Chinese Orchestra, the Hong Kong Dance Company, the Hong Kong Repertory Theatre. It also supports the Hong Kong Philharmonic, to the tune of $60.3 million in 1995/96.

Altogether, these groups account for 33 per cent of Urbco’s cultural budget for 1995/96. Another 42 per cent of cultural budget goes under the heading “civic centres” (which can run from managing and maintanence to building costs). There are additional budget items for a film archive, music office and operations. But the clincher, again, is the “cultural presentations and festivals” category, accounting for 16 per cent of the budget.

This is where all other artistic groups turn for support. But it is also where the big subverted operations can go for an extra dip. So for those outside Hong Kong’s six major arts companies, there is little meat left on the bone.

“The issue of the general support grant [as given by the HKADC] is of great concern and I personally dislike it,” says Ho. “If we had a lot of money, then fine, but it is a great injustice when the rest of the arts gets the leftovers.” Conceding that simply cancelling the grants would solve little, he says a reassessment ought to be done.

Chia speaks with more circumspection. He says there is insufficient money after the big boys have taken their allocation. Echoing the HKADC refrain, he says groups need to be helped to “diversify their funding sources.”

Chia says that inasmuch as the older generation tends to regard arts as a low priority, arts development takes time. “It has taken a long time to develop … but I don’t believe that Hong Kong, after all this work, should cut their money. Each year we hear of freezing budgets or cuts — and the result is an anaemic situation.”

Jefferies would certainly agree. He says he would like to see more ballet but he thinks it is necessary for Hong Kong Ballet to make an impact internationally. “We have our own unique style and the reality is that a diversity of small groups saps strength from the large one.”

Target
Should anyone go by attendance records, the Hong Kong Sinfonietta would seem an easy target for a budget trimming. It has yet to break the 60 per cent mark. The City Contemporary Dance even worse off at an average an average 50 per cent.

Despite the concern about the huge sums going too to the few, Bruce Walker, a former chairman of the Hong Kong Players, says he thinks many of the smaller musical and drama groups are not that concerned with grants. He says that has become less of an issue for English language productions, which are now unlikely to attract funding.

Walker’s main concern is venues. “As far as I can see, there is not a shortage of venues for these smaller productions. The government has excellent facilities but they’re just too expensive to hire,” he says. And while Urbco does offer halls at reduced rates, often as much as three months is required to apply for the dispensation. Walker also questions the wisdom of the government building more theatres if the rates are not at affordable levels.

Certainly, Hong Kong needs more performance space. The usage rates for the City Hall Concert Hall, and the Cultural Centre’s Concert Hall and Grand Theatre hit 97 per cent, 87 per cent and 98 per cent respectively. The upshot of this has been pressure on commercial ventures like Les Miserables. According to Walker, also a founder of Lunchbox, the impresario firm which organises world spectaculars like Les Miserables, any limit on the length of productions runs would discourage their visiting Hong Kong.

Unsurprisingly, such commercial shows are the only performing arts productions in Hong Kong to ring up profits.

Hong Kong arts, funding