Despite skyrocketing real estate costs, Hong Kong is creating a flourishing arts scene. Michelle Jana Chan examines how.
In the heart of Hong Kong’s SoHo district, one of the city’s hottest pieces of real estate is not being turned into a bank or block of apartments. Instead, the former Police Married Quarters, renamed PMQ, is becoming a hub of design studios, ateliers and pop-ups. It will inevitably draw tourists, too, as resident artists and artisans sell their cutting-edge fashion, handmade jewellery, crafted ceramics and one-of-a-kind accessories.
Subsidised studios for artists are nothing short of astonishing in a city where the skyrocketing cost of real estate is increasingly pushing out small businesses in favour of big chains. Yet PMQ is not an exception but part of a pattern – and policy – in this town, one of the most congested patches on the planet.
Empty or abandoned buildings, some of them legacies of the colonial period, are being converted into hotbeds of art and culture. The Asia Society Hong Kong Center, for example, opened two years ago in a 19th-century British Army explosives magazine. It now hosts art exhibitions, panel discussions and cultural talks... Keep reading on The Telegraph
In the heart of Hong Kong’s SoHo district, one of the city’s hottest pieces of real estate is not being turned into a bank or block of apartments. Instead, the former Police Married Quarters, renamed PMQ, is becoming a hub of design studios, ateliers and pop-ups. It will inevitably draw tourists, too, as resident artists and artisans sell their cutting-edge fashion, handmade jewellery, crafted ceramics and one-of-a-kind accessories.
Subsidised studios for artists are nothing short of astonishing in a city where the skyrocketing cost of real estate is increasingly pushing out small businesses in favour of big chains. Yet PMQ is not an exception but part of a pattern – and policy – in this town, one of the most congested patches on the planet.
Empty or abandoned buildings, some of them legacies of the colonial period, are being converted into hotbeds of art and culture. The Asia Society Hong Kong Center, for example, opened two years ago in a 19th-century British Army explosives magazine. It now hosts art exhibitions, panel discussions and cultural talks... Keep reading on The Telegraph