Newsletter 2021-12-31
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December Newsletter from Arts for Good Foundation
Welcome to the December 2021 newsletter from Arts For Good Foundation. At the end of the special year, we are excited to share our finished artworks and provide an update on our art viewing study group programme at M+ and HKMOA. At the same time, we send New Year's wishes to all our supporters and beneficiaries. We are looking forward to another great year with you all in 2022. Happy New Year.  

Best regards,
Amanda H Sun
Change Maker
Founder& Director
Arts for All, Arts for Good, Arts for Inclusion
 
Journey of Reflection 2021 with Ane Alfeiran

Journey of Reflection 2021 has comprised a series of art making involving youths (14-22) and Mexican Artist Ane Alfeiran. It was designed to reflect youths' feelings and emotions throughout the year of 2021.

During the day one kickoff, we introduced  the students to a process of researching and reflecting on their emotions with the help of their social media archives, emails and magazines, and newspapers articles they read over 12-month period. Through this introspection and research process, students recorded their emotions and chose textile materials and the corresponding colours  to represent these emotions throughout the year.

We guided the students through three forms of art making processes: 1) embroidery on two different painted canvases, 2).winding and stretching thread on nails in a wooden frame, and 3) an art space installation  in which textile were wound around four pillars and suspended in the venue, the former textile factory at The Mills.

On the painted canvases, the black coloured base was meant to  represent the dark side of 2021 while the white represented the empty state we each carry inside ourselves. Both of the colours are accepting new colours and memories openly.

The students were able to choose among 12 colours to represent their emotions for each month of 2021, expressing their individual complicated feelings through the three forms while also co-creating their collective feelings and efforts in 2021. 

In the creative process, we were very delighted to listen  to their individual stories, give them space to share their stories with their peers, and allow them to express their feelings and stories through the soft textile medium.  We were very touched by their stories and emotions they shared and deeply appreciated their openness and trust.

Each thread in the textile creations on the canvases and nailed frame, and each thread that was incorporated into the art space installation carries pieces of their indiviudal stories. Thus, the works created deliver the collective meanings and memories of Hong Kong youths in 2021.  

Thank you very much for all your trust and your incredible art creations. 
 
Community Service through Arts and Leisure programme at Hope of the City

The theory of social networks analyses how changes in the network’s structure affect the levels of some basic parameters associated with the concept of polarisation.

Every individual belongs to different social groups and has multiple affiliations within and among those groups. Each of the affiliation confers a specific identity to that individual. Recognition of the fact that individuals have multiple affiliations expands the potential  spectrum of commonalities among people in different communities.

The Arts for Good Foundation’s vision of fostering social inclusion is based on our belief that the theory of social network allow us to seek commonalities in our communities through leisure programmes, arts appreciation and learning, as well as through intercultural exchanges and connections.

We are deeply grateful to have had student volunteers from @hku.cedars and @cishk and @gsishk to share their favourite leisure and art activities with the children from single-parent families in the Sham Shui Po neighbourhood. By providing the children with meaningful and immersive leisure and art making workshops, the volunteers enabled the children's single mothers to participate in empowerment camps with @hkmomtrepreneurs. In 2022, we will continue to build new social networks within our communities to help support  students in Hong Kong. We hope that these programmes accompolish  changes in our society in the future, helping to fulfil our deep belief in social inclusion.
 
Tsuen Wan Storytelling through Chinese Ink Performance Art

We are delighted to work with InkWanders  on the Tsuen Wan Community Storytelling Through Ink Performance Arts project.  

During a three-hour session that included community storytelling, heritage appreciation, and art making,  we helped student participants to explore Tsuen Wan's historical and social changes since the 1950s, particular those related to female social status in Hong Kong.  

We started by introducing Tsuen Wan with a short film, guiding the students to appreciate the art and heritage highlights at The Mills. We then shared a family history story from the 1960s as written by the third generation of a textile family in Tsuen Wan. We then allowed the students  to walk around The Mills and explore all  the art installations in the space while also discovering heritage aspects of the building, in order to gain deeper understanding of the social context that underlies the history of textile making in Hong Kong, how deeply the craft and culture of  textile making is connected to Tsuen Wan and the meaning of textile-related artworks in the city.  

The subsequent ink performance art making session was intended to allow them express their own understanding and their personalities by writing the two modified version of  the Chinese characters that form Tsuen Wan (荃灣) together.  The modified version of the characters carry deeper meaning of the history, the social context, and the status  of female in Tsuen Wan.  Students took turns working on each stroke of the two characters on two large pieces of cloth. More importantly, they were  given limited space but  freedom to create. They were motivated to think and work with each others' individual  forms of expressions through each stroke. At the same time, they were given   the opportunity to work collaboratively to produce an artwork that express their own individual style and personalities while also engaging with and expressing their peers' intentions and styles. 

We are delighted to see how the students responded to this opportunity and challenge, expressing how they feel about the community they live in, and their dedication to the performance art making process. 
 
Art Viewing Study Groups at M+ and HKMOA

We are very glad to have had six student study groups visit M+ museum and Hong Kong Museum of Art (HKMOA) in December in sessions led by our trained facilitators.

Through the art viewing study groups, we encouraged students to exchange ideas and different interpretations, to ask open-ended questions, and to share and appreciate different perspectives.

More importantly, the sessions shared the joy and meaning of arts with the members of Hong Kong Community, who might lack support and opportunitiy to view and appreciate art in their regular life.

We are very grateful for our school supporters and community partners for helping to recruit student participants.  A big thank you to our student facilitators for their diligent independent art study and session preparation,  particularly at this busy exam time.

We would also like to thank our onsite volunteers for their support with logistic and management. We look forward to engaging with future study groups with new community partners who will allow us to introduce the art viewing opportunities to more students in Hong Kong.  

We also hope to expand our network to benefit more children (aged above 10) in Hong Kong via art viewing and appreciating opportunity. We hope to make this a sustainable programme after this successful pilot project. We deeply appreciate the continued commitment of our supporters, volunteers, and connectors.  

Thank you, and Happy New Year to you all. 
Past Newsletters:
 
Arts for Good Foundation, Hong Kong SAR China