Written by John POON (FS2016-17, Hong Kong Baptist University)

 

The Make a Difference Festival (MaD Festival) International Assembly was held successfully on 21st- 23rd July in the Kwai Tsing Theatre and HKICC Lee Shau Kee School of Creativity in Hong Kong, with the aim of encouraging social innovation and creativity. Despite a cancellation of the final day’s events due to a Typhoon Signal No. 8 signal, the event was an overriding success.

 

Organized by the MaD Institute together and sponsored by the Victor and William Fung Foundation, the theme of the MaD Festival International Assembly this year was “The blink of the creative mass”. The Foundation sponsored 25 Fung Scholars to join the Forum. Fung Scholars were able to freely engage with the international changemakers and 1,300 MaDees from all over Asia in events including Centrestage, Exchange, Cinema, Open Studios, The Park Lab, Free Market, Excursions and Asian Changemakers Jam.

 

The international assembly kicked off with keynotes speeches from creative international changemakers Clorinda Romo, Matthew Hay and Noriko Deno from Mexico, London and Japan respectively, who also participated in the exchange session on the second day. One of the activities at the conference, Centrestage, explored solutions to different social issues like sustainable design and social architecture; while the ripple forum and free market allowed participants to actively contribute to discussions to initiate changes in fields like education, equality and caring culture. Excursions around HK also enabled participants to see workable solutions in action in society. MaDbooks created by Grace, a Fung Scholar as well as a reporter of Stand News, comprised of feature articles of inspiring stories by MaD organizers and participants.

 

Karlie Chen (FS 2011-12, Hong Kong Baptist University) participated in a “Sustainable Design” Centrestage and an excursion entitled “An Experiment of Community Self-reliance”. She described how she was amazed by the creative ideas she had witnessed and how she had discovered that the things we perceive as trash can be turned into new and appealing designs for the arts, furniture, decoration etc. Kevin Lo (FS2006-07, City University of Hong Kong), the President of the Fung Scholars Hong Kong Local Chapter, also remarked that the concept and growth of the local chapter was inspired by the ethos of the MaD Festival.

 

Karlie Chen (left) enjoyed the excursion entitled An Experiment of Community Self-reliance