Eventide Conversations: Artist Residencies: New Models

Tue 29 June 2021

In partnership with Hong Kong Arts Administrators Association, the second of our Eventide Conversations takes place on Tue 29 June. Curated by independent director and producer Ching Ching Ho and Executive Director of the Hong Kong Ballet Heidi Lee, this program provides opportunities for engagement and knowledge exchange between arts and cultural leaders in Hong Kong and Australia.

Artist Residencies: New Models
Art residencies enable artists to live and work outside their usual environments, providing time and space to reflect, discover and create work. There is a wide variety of organisational models and approaches to offering residencies, but they have objectives in common, such as providing an opportunity for the artist to develop their area of interest; create a new work or project by engaging with a local community or geography; demonstrating how artistic practices can stimulate engagement and positive change in communities; and fostering worldwide cultural exchange.

Our speakers will share their experiences in structuring and supporting residencies, how they engage with residency partners to advocate value, as well as reflecting on how they’ve adapted and responded to changing global circumstances and new forms of mobility.

Hosted by Janice Poon (Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts), joined by speakers Josephine Wai (Asian Cultural Council Hong Kong) and Sophie Travers (Res Artis Australia, Collingwood Yards).

The project is supported by the National Foundation for Australia-China Relations.

    MEET THE PANELLISTS

    Janice Poon – Host
    Janice Poon is Senior Lecturer (Playwriting and Dramaturgy) and Academic Project Officer in the School of Drama at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. She is also the Artistic Director of Hong Kong Dramatists. She has been recognised with the Asian Cultural Council Lee Hysan Foundation Fellowship and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the British Government’s Chevening Scholarship on her outstanding achievement. She engages in interdisciplinary and intercultural creative work through playwriting, directing, dramaturgy and curating. She is a frequent speaker and workshop master at international theatre conferences and festivals, and her works have been presented in major cities in Europe, the UK, the USA, Canada, Spain, Taiwan and several Asian countries. Her work And Then, I Float won four major awards and was nominated best play at the Hong Kong Theatre Libre (2014), Small Waisted won the Multicultural Short Plays Competition organised by UNESCO/International Theatre Institute (2016). Online Theatre of Pornography received the Critics Award from the International Association of Theatre Critics (Hong Kong) on the innovative use of digital platform.

    Sophie Travers
    Sophie is a Scottish born arts manager based in Melbourne, Australia. She recently joined the Board of Directors of the international artist residency network Res Artis, when the organisation moved its constitution to Australia from The Netherlands. Sophie is currently Director of Collingwood Yards, a newly opened creative precinct in Melbourne that is home to seventy arts organisations and artists and is pioneering a model of sustainable artist support and community engagement. Sophie has an international career, having lived and worked in nine countries, with significant international cultural diplomacy roles for British Council and Australia Council for the Arts. For the British Council Sophie worked across twenty six countries in Latin America, Europe and Australasia. For Australia Council Sophie was based in the IETM network’s office in Brussels for two years, and subsequently in Berlin as International Development Manager, Europe. Sophie is on the Board of Directors of Tarrawarra Museum of Art and Deakin University’s Arts Management leadership group. She mentors artists based in Sydney, Melbourne and Berlin and speaks six European languages. Sophie is learning Indonesian as a lockdown project and is interested to expand her Asian awareness and creative connections.

    Josephine Wai
    Josephine Wai is Director of Asian Cultural Council Hong Kong, responsible for the fellowship programs in mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau to support talented artists and professionals, and enhance cultural exchange between Asia and the United States.  Ms Wai has over 20 years of experience in arts administration and management.  From 1999 to 2011, she was the Director, Arts Support of the Hong Kong Arts Development Council, and was responsible for the development of arts support policies and grant systems.