Visual Art Education and
Community Development Project
(VAECD)
Principal Investigator
Dr. Fung Siu Han, Anissa
Area of Research Project
Creative Arts and Culture Development
Project Period
From 12/2009 To 1/2011
Objectives
Serving the community with visual arts knowledge and skills, facilitate
social development and enhancement of living in the Hong Kong society.
Promoting knowledge transfer through visual arts education applied
research and creative action projects by funding staff and students
to engage in community development activities.
Providing curriculum-plus learning activities to student-teachers.
Empowering visual arts student to apply subject expertise to design,
plan and manage their own initiated projects, to handle problems
and crisis in real life contexts and to reflect on their experiences for
development of positive personal values.
Methods Used
Each year a maximum of 7 awards (4 staff projects + 3 student-initiated projects) will be
granted to successful proposals reviewed by external professionals.
The projects focus in 4 specified categories:
- Art community services
- Art education and research activities
- Art and design development and enterprise practices
- Creative arts exhibitions and performances
Summary of Findings
Implications to contemporary education modes and approaches:
Learning from doing is important for students to pick up, apply and consolidate knowledge.
Besides knowledge building and transfer, learning through serving provides a means to
establish positive values and attitude in participants, and to foster caring, community conscious
minds.
KT community service is a good platform for character-shaping of young children.
Reflection of teachers:
Is this the time for us to modify our role and become knowledge facilitators?
Impact
Students learned to conduct teaching and educational activities in non-classroom contexts.
Students learned to cope with people of different age groups and social background, and
become more sensitive to people’s needs.
In staff-student service / research projects, students learned from staff of how knowledge is
being transferred from learning in lecture room into practical daily life application with the
public as knowledge recipients.
In student-initiated projects, students managed their budget, finance and working team matters,
and have taken full responsibility of the process and outcomes, able to critically share with
their peers the success and failure consequences.
Students executed their leadership and coordination in drafting proposal, design, organize
and run arts activities with peers, collaborative professionals and organizations.
Selected Publications Related to the Study
Publication:
Fung, ASH. (2012). Knowledge Transfer with Visual Arts (視覺藝術的知識轉移). Hong Kong:
HKIEd Knowledge Transfer Award Fund.
Award (Internal):
Project PI won the Knowledge Transfer Award (2011) conferred by the Research Development
Office, HKIEd.
Award (External):
Project PI won the Certificate of Merit of the 2011 Hong Kong Arts Development Award--Arts
Education (Non-school category), conferred by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council.
Dissemination to public:
- Presentation of project outcome in the VAECD Project Annual Exhibition in Art Gallery.
- Departmental sharing as inspiring community arts project in CCA Departmental KT Seminar.
- Institute sharing as the winning project of the RDO Knowledge Transfer Award 2011.
- Invited participation in the poster presentation in the knowledge Exchange Conference in
2012 organized by the HKU.
Biography of Principal Investigator
Dr Anissa Fung is Associate Professor in the Department of Cultural and Creative Arts. Her research interests include creative ceramics art production, Chinese ritual art and culture studies, knowledge transfer and community arts education with visual arts. She is a ceramics artist with works globally showcased in more than 50 exhibitions with artworks archived by local and overseas museums. Dr Fung is currently Project Leader of the Visual Arts Education and Community Development Project, Chairman of the CCA Departmental Learning and Teaching Committee, Adjunct Professor of the Hong Kong Buddhist College, and Visiting Professor of the Hanyang University International Summer School in Korea. She is the recipient of the Hong Kong Artists Series (I) Award (1995);Excellence in Teaching Award (2009) and Knowledge Transfer Award (2010-2011) in HKIEd; and also the winner of 2011 Hong Kong Arts Development Award- Certificate of Merit in Arts Education conferred by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council.