Design Trust 2022 April Cycle Grant Recipients | July Cycle Call for Grants

Design Trust 2022 July Grant Application is now open. Share with us your ideas and proposals by 20th July 2022. We are also pleased to announce the Grant Recipients from the 2022 April grant cycle. There are projects upcoming, which include research topics on video games, housing, and community engagement.

Design Trust offers grants to individual designers, curators, collectives and non-profit organisations for projects and activities that are relevant to various design disciplines. These grants support projects relevant to the context and content of Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area. Cities within the Greater Bay Area include: the two Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macao, and the nine municipalities of Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Foshan, Huizhou, Dongguan, Zhongshan, Jiangmen and Zhaoqing in Guangdong Province. We support innovative, thought-provoking investigations in various design disciplines from graphics, media, wearables, architecture to the built environment; and actively aim to accelerate creative design and research development of meaningful projects. These projects include but are not limited to: talks, exhibitions, residencies, research projects and creative installations.

DESIGN TRUST SEED GRANT fosters a culture of experimentation, testing and sharing. It is awarded to individuals seeking to kick-start a meaningful and intellectual project with social, educational, economical or environmental impact for communities. Seed Grants may support applicants who have a project in the pipeline that needs additional resources, as well as emerging designers, and young scholars. Design Trust highly encourages applicants from Hong Kong and the region to apply for this grant to support projects showcasing work at international venues, symposium or international biennales to showcase prototypes, or works relevant to architecture.

DESIGN TRUST FEATURE GRANT fosters cross-disciplinary projects focusing on the Greater Bay Area region. Projects awarded have a wide reaching audience and may be sited in an exhibition or biennale venue with international recognition and standing. This grant supports international exchanges between a Hong Kong/ China based collective with an international renowned cultural institution. It aims to excel, share and build new knowledge and unique positions on the value of design, critical research and provocative outcome.

Grant Recipients from the 2022 April grant cycle:

‘’a¦t Play’’ by Yuk Yiu IP, explores video game as a serious medium that facilitates creative expression about our being in the world. Video game is arguably the most popular and important ludic form that embodies contemporary digital culture and society. Digital creativity, as defined in the current project, is a practice that employs the use of computer codes and algorithmic thinking in its creative implementation. Video game, being a rule-based creative form that fuses digital technology, screen practice, media design and ludic culture, stands as an exemplary of digital creativity as understood. Through the creation and showcase of video game, this project intends to produce a concrete and accessible example in demonstrating the relevancy and potentials of digital creativity.

‘’Housing Re-public’’ by Rico Samuel Diedering & Pedram Ghelichi, explores how private architects reinvented Hong Kong Public housing between 1970-1990.  Although modernist housing estates are increasingly admired by netizens and academics alike, their qualities are either romanticised and reduced to their two-dimensional appearance or buried in wordy reflections. The question is how to identify and articulate the nuances in the architectural design of Hong Kong public housing? Seeing immense value in an exhibition where these radical housing concepts are brought to life in three-dimensional forms, via VR, video clips and tactile models, the exhibition will guide visitors through the complex typologies designed by public servants and private architects, primarily focused on a twenty-year period in which Hong Kong’s colonial government relied on private practitioners to sustain the public housing program. We hope to ignite enthusiasm, discourse and collaboration for the design of affordable housing by re-introducing a public agenda to public housing.

‘’Inter-island Festival 2023’’ by Yip Kai Chun & Islanders, continues the momentum of the earlier Design Trust supported Feature Grant in 2020, the second edition will be in 2022-23. Inter-island Festival is a community art and lifestyle festival dedicated to the inter-island ferry and the outer islands. The festival concerns the outer islands of Peng Chau, Cheung Chau and Lantau Island’s Mui Wo and Chi Ma Wan, as well as the inter-island sea.  It aims to highlight the distinct environments, local communities, histories and concerns of these places, to promote and protect their shared cultures, craftmanships and raise awareness of the invaluable nature Hong Kong possesses. It also hopes to foster multiple connections and exchange between these outposts with a down-to-earth, accessible and playful approach.