Transcriber: Elisabetta Fanti Reviewer: Alan Watson
How many of you share my awkward experience?
You have friends coming into Hong Kong for the first time
and ask you to recommend a place where they can go
and learn about local design and designers.
In the past my mind always went blank.
I really didn't know where to send them to because most of our space,
retail space is taken up by global brands
but not anymore.
Today I'm going to share with you the making of a new space,
a space that is also conservation and social enterprise
and a space that combines the effort of our government and social enterprise
and also creating a platform which is totally non-profit.
Most of us know what a conservation project is.
But I just want to explain to some of you what exactly social enterprise is.
According to the UK government, it's a business with social objectives
whose surplus are reinvested for the purposes
in the business or community,
rather than being driven by the need
to deliver profit to their shareholders and owners.
Between a conservation project and a social enterprise,
there's one thing in common:
they rely heavily on funding to start and to sustain.
And where did the money come from usually?
Usually from the government, usually from donations,
usually from fund-raising events, auctions, selling products.
But there's a problem with this business model.
First of all you never know where and when the next dollar is going to come from.
And then that makes it very very difficult for you
to make any long-term planning or commitment.
And also it scares away investors.
Why?
Because they believe
that these organizations focus too much on social responsibility
rather than being driven by the need to deliver profit to their shareholders.
When I googled "social enterprise" or "non-profit social enterprise",
I found a great number of articles
talking about the challenges and failures of these organizations.
Is social enterprise destined to fail?
Personally I don't think so.
Not unless you run it like an actual business.
An opportunity came up four years ago:
there was this vacant piece of land sitting in the middle of our city,
in a very very expensive property
right between Lan Kwai Fong and Soho along Hollywood Road.
It's been sitting there for about 12 years vacant and unused.
Normally our government would sell it to a developer, make a bundle,
and then turn it into another residence or high rise.
But they didn't do that.
Why?
Because this place has history.
In 1889 it was the Central School
that was the very first school in Hong Kong history
that offered Western education.
When it was completely destroyed during the Second World War,
the UK government built the very first Police Married Quarter,
providing residence for our young policemen.
So that was another first.
But after the families moved out in the year 2000,
it was left there vacant and unused and the government really didn't know,
wasn't sure what to do with it.
It was Mrs. Carrie Lam, our former Secretary of Development,
who really took a brave move and made a brave decision.
This decision is going to change and will change
the creative ecology and landscape of Hong Kong.
She fully understood
that the biggest challenge of Hong Kong designers is space.
So the government threw out a challenge and said,
"How do you turn a heritage site into a sustainable commercial platform
that benefits the design society?"
Like I said the biggest challenges for the local designers are rents.
The rents here in Hong Kong - I'm sure you all know -
they're so high that none of our designers can ever afford to have their own space,
have a little retail space to showcase their work,
to showcase or sell their products.
That really limited their career growth.
So, once we get rid of this, we may be able to help them a little bit.
And what also prompted the government to entertain this idea,
was a programme that happened five years ago.
During one of our annual Business of Design Week,
a concurrent programme called Detour,
the former organiser the Ambassadors of Design
asked the government to open up the site
for our young designers to go in and play, and express themselves creatively.
The programme itself was very successful.
It attracted about 40,000 visitors in two weeks.
That was very very successful by any standards.
So what we did was...
We were one of the four proposals that were submitted to the government.
With the help of a very generous foundation
called the Musketeers Foundation,
we were able to put together a very, very sound proposal
that was eventually accepted by the government.
We proposed a proposal that is sustainable,
and that can help the designers and also benefit the community.
I only have fifteen minutes,
so I'm not going to go into the details of every single one of our proposals.
But I'll just show you a brief introduction of our business plan.
What we proposed to the government was:
we divided our site into three sections.
One is for events and community use.
25% goes to commercial operators:
restaurants, bookstores, retail space.
These spaces and these operators actually can bring in regular revenue
and also regular high-quality customers to our site.
And then the 55% we use to nurture over 100 designers
and let them open their very first shop,
and very first showcase in their career.
On top of that we proposed to the government
that between the two buildings we built a connection bridge.
That bridge provided a roof garden which is very nice -
you should go and have a look -
and then a 600 square meters exhibition space,
and then also a glass canopy covering the centre court,
making it another 1,000 square meters of semi-event covered space
which can help us generate revenue.
We called this programme PMQ
because we want people to understand where we came from.
So we took the initials of the three names: P, M, Q.
And PMQ we turned into a platform for creative entrepreneurs.
We want PMQ to be a place of history.
We want PMQ to be a place of learning.
A place of sharing.
A place of connecting and inspiring.
And also a place to chill.
PMQ is a place for designers, community and general public.
And we seem to be doing something right
because for the first three months that we opened
we had 1.2 million visitors coming to our site,
giving our designers excellent media exposure,
giving them a chance to finally showcase their talents and their creativity
and their products to the general market.
We are not the only project that is doing this kind of things.
Actually if you look around,
these kinds of projects are popping up everywhere.
In Singapore we have the Gillman Barracks
and in Taipei they have the Songshan Creative Park
and also the Huashan Creative Park.
Both are really fabulous places if you get to go to Taiwan.
You should really visit these places.
And in London there's the Cockpit Arts
and then in Stockholm there's the 100 Houses.
Why are all these really nice old places been converted
to support the creative industry?
I think because finally all the governments realized
that nurturing a creative energy and creative community
will eventually benefit the community.
Here's an invitation to all of you:
if you are a designer,
if you want to showcase your work,
if you want to test out your business model,
if you want to just basically try out and see
if your model works, or your product works
in Asia or in Hong Kong,
if you are an organization, wanting to connect,
wanting to work with us, bringing education programmes,
or exchanging programmes,
so that both design communities can benefit from this collaboration,
we ask you to call us.
Let's create a place for co-creation.
Let's create a place for designers and also for the community.
The reason we are all doing this, I believe,
is because we all believe that creativity opens up one's mind
and that design is a powerful tool for building a strong economy.
Thank you.
(Applause)