Communications, the Media and Information Technology | 377
Creative Industries
Create Hong Kong and CreateSmart Initiative
'Create Hong Kong' (CreateHK) is a dedicated office set up by the Government in June 2009. It drives the development of creative industries with a seven-pronged strategy formulated after consultation with the Legislative Council and the trade. The strategy comprises the following elements:
• nurturing a pool of creative human capital;
• facilitation of start-ups and development of creative establishments;
I generation of demand for innovation and creativity and expansion of the
local market size for creative industries;
• promotion of creative industries in the Mainland and overseas to help explore outside markets;
• fostering a creative atmosphere within the community;
⚫ development of creative clusters in Hong Kong to generate synergy and
facilitate exchanges; and
• organisation of major events to promote Hong Kong as Asia's creative capital.
CreateHK administers the $300 million CreateSmart Initiative (CSI), established in June 2009, which provides funding support to projects in line with the strategy. Since June 2011, the CSI has also been providing funds for design projects covering design and branding-related research, continuing professional education and promotion of design culture, which were previously funded by the DesignSmart Initiative (DSI) launched in 2004. In 2011, the CSI provided $71.8 million to support 29 projects, covering various creative sectors including design. The DSI provided $23 million for nine design projects before it merged with CSI.
Creative Events
The CreateHK has been working closely with stakeholders to foster an environment conducive to the development of creative industries. In particular, it is committed to assisting industry groups in organising major creative events to attract enterprises, talent and academics in creative industries from around the world to visit Hong Kong to strengthen its status as Asia's creative capital.
These major events cover various creative sectors. Examples of new initiatives in 2011 include the Hong Kong Asian-Pop Music Festival organised by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (Hong Kong Group) Limited in March to promote Hong Kong as Asia's music hub, which featured music performances by top and up-and-coming artists from Asia; and the annual Asian conference and exhibition convened in December by the Association of Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Graphics and Interactive Technologies (SIGGRAPH Asia 2011), which is one of the most important events for the computer graphics and interactive technologies sector in Asia. Signature annual events include the