ENG-2007 — Page 458

386 Recreation, Sport and the Arts

under the Artists in the Neighbourhood Scheme III were staged around Hong Kong during the year.

Hong Kong Visual Arts Centre

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The Art Promotion Office also manages the Hong Kong Visual Arts Centre which has nine art studios, a lecture theatre, an exhibition hall and a multi-purpose room. The centre focuses on training in the visual arts, promoting visual arts and providing facilities for hire to professionals. The 6th Art Specialist Course, which includes two disciplines ink painting and Chinese calligraphy, was organised for people who wish to pursue structured professional art training. The centre also organised a series. of Artist in Residence programmes and invited winners of the Hong Kong Art Biennial to take part. The organisers of the Hong Kong Graphic Art Fiesta 2007 joined forces with their counterparts in the Hong Kong Open Printshop to hold two exhibitions and a series of educational activities to encourage international artistic exchanges and to promote contemporary printmaking and creativity.

Central Conservation Section

The Central Conservation Section's job is to look after and preserve the relics in public museums for present and future generations to view and appreciate. It has facilities for maintaining and treating more than 563 cultural objects, including paintings, documents, prints, textiles, metals, ceramics, organic materials and archaeological finds.

The section completed in August its works for preserving the historic 511-tonne Fireboat Alexander Grantham which was lifted out of the sea and taken to an exhibition site built for it at Quarry Bay Park. Hundreds of items associated with the fireboat are also on display in the gallery which was formally opened on September 29.

The section also made the arrangements for numerous valuable objects, borrowed from different museums, to be displayed at the exhibitions organised by the LCSD to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the HKSAR. Among the items were Chinese paintings and calligraphy from Palace Museum and world treasures from the British Museum as well as cultural relics from Sanxingdui and Jinsha, and archaeological finds from different museums of the Mainland.

As part of its educational and extension activities, the section organised 38 workshops, guided tours, thematic talks and seminars, which attracted a total of 811 participants. To win greater community support for preserving Hong Kong's cultural property, the section formed a volunteer conservation team which contributed 354 service hours to various conservation projects.

The section continued to operate a web-based list of publications on conservation of historical and cultural objects for people to read about them.

Public Libraries

The LCSD operates the Hong Kong Public Libraries (HKPL) network which comprises 66 static libraries and 10 mobile libraries. It also manages the Books