Top: DT Project Cut Paste. Photo: Design Trust

As a dynamic platform that promotes the creative industries and public education, Design Trust will provide funding for projects that stimulate design talent, creative content creation and research initiatives related to Hong Kong and the Greater Pearl River Delta Region (GPRD*).

Working with multiple disciplines of design, the Trust aims to accelerate creative design and develop meaningful projects through the establishment of two grants: Cultural Project Grants and Research Fellowship Grants, in partnership with established international institutes.

Cell by Caroline Mak. Photo: Design Trust

Cultural Project Grants

With seed grants beginning at HK$10,000 (approximately US$1,300), the Cultural Project Grant is open to individual designers, collectives, as well as non-profit organisations engaged in the GPRD. The grant seeks to support projects and activities relevant to the promotion of design, including but not limited to talks, exhibitions, residencies, overseas research projects and creative installations.

Proposals are globally accepted via the Design Trust website. A panel of evaluators will review and shortlist successful proposals per quarterly. The deadline for the Cultural Project Grant is set at the 20th of each quarter, beginning April 2015.

Portrait of MAP Office. Photo: Design Trust

MAP Office, Hong Kong based artist duo Valerie Portefaix and Laurent Gutierrez, received a sponsorship of HK$150,000 as the inaugural successful applicant for the Cultural Project Grant. Titled, Hong Kong Is Land, MAP Office will work with eight local communities to explore its unique culture and economy, depicting these communities in the shape of eight artificial islands, evenly distributed in the territory. Hong Kong Is Land will travel to MoMA in New York, and then to MAK Vienna.

HK Designer in Denmark. Photo: Design Trust

Research Fellowships

Disbursed in collaboration with institution partners, the Research Fellowships will make its application call via the respective institute’s channels. The inaugural fellowship titled, M+/ Design Trust Fellowship 2014-2015, is a partnership with M+ museum, where Fan Ling was selected as the winner.

Fan’s project, Hong Kong As An Archetype: Revisiting Modernist Ideas of the City and its Urban Forms, was selected out of 40 applicants. Her work aims to bridge creative talents with social and business problems. The research will receive a monthly stipend of HK$40,000 for six months.

“My research aims to recuperate the idea of the Chinese city as a modernist project beginning in the 1940s, thereby arriving at an understanding of the underlying logic quintessential to our city’s built environment. The fellowship will enable me first to reconstruct the modernist history of Hong Kong’s urban forms, an area of scholarship relatively overlooked, and second to interpret these findings in comparison with Beijing, as archetypes, thereby contributing to the continuing discourse and theories of our city’s evolution,” Fan Ling explains.

*The GPRD includes: Hong Kong, Macau, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Foshan, Jiangmen, Dongguan, Zhongshan, parts of Huizhou (the urban district of Huizhou, Huidong County, & Boluo County), and parts of Zhaoqing (the urban district of Zhaoqing, Gaoyao, & Sihui).

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