RECREATION, SPORTS AND THE ARTS
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Friends of Regional Council Town Halls
To widen the audience base and increase audience building efforts, the Regional Council introduced the Friends of Town Hall Schemes at three of its civic centres in the beginning of 1995. The scheme aims to nurture a group of performing arts lovers through their participation in the council's cultural activities in civic centres. It is also intended to promote their interests in the performing arts and enrich their quality of life through cultural experience. It attracted a total of 2 491 members during the year.
Entertainment Programmes
The council regularly presents_free cultural and entertainment programmes in community halls, playgrounds and open space areas for residents in the nearby neighbourhoods with programmes ranging from the traditional and folkloric to the modern and popular. During the year, 408 programmes were organised, attracting 241 130 people. The Arts in Blossom Scheme continued to provide opportunities for budding and amateur artists to build up stage experience through regular performance.
Visual Arts
The council's Best of Visual Arts Scheme provides opportunities for local visual artists to exhibit their works at major civic centres. A total of eight one-person and joint exhibitions of Chinese painting and calligraphy, and Western painting were presented to 15 682 viewers.
Venues
Most performance venues in Hong Kong are built and operated by the Urban and Regional Councils, and range from major facilities such as the Hong Kong Stadium and Hong Kong Cultural Centre to smaller multi-purpose centres used for district- based cultural activities.
Urban Council Venues Hong Kong Stadium
The Hong Kong Stadium was redeveloped with a donation of $850 million from the Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club. This 40 000-seat outdoor national stadium is capable of staging world-class sports and entertainment events.
Since the stadium opened in March, 1994, the Urban Council has addressed some of the teething problems, such as the unhealthy growth of turf and noise levels leading to complaints from nearby residents. In 1995, more than 750 000 spectators participated in 49 events at the stadium.
Hong Kong Cultural Centre
Since its inception in 1989, the Hong Kong Cultural Centre has established itself as a major performing arts venue attracting leading artists from all over the world. The Cultural Centre has three major performing venues: the 2 085-seat Concert Hall, the 1734-seat Grand Theatre and the 534-seat Studio Theatre. In 1995, 780 878 people attended 837 performances in these venues.
Highlights of the year included performances by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Staatskapelle Dresden, the Michael Nyman Band, Midori, Vladimir