Alternative School / Workshops for Emerging Arts Professionals 2024

The Alternative School: Small Acts (September 7–October 6)
Workshops for Emerging Arts Professionals: New Flows (September 23–30)
Small Acts / New Flows—A Public Gathering (September 29)

How can the arts participate in developing practices and cultures of sustainable worlding? The global ecological crisis is amplifying the interconnectedness of all living things, as the planet’s ecosystem strains under the weight of historical capitalism and geopolitical conflict. But discussions and interventions across geographies and disciplines responding to this era of polycrisis are often perceived as remote, as governments and corporations seemingly prioritise profit over sustainability and everyday struggles. Small Acts / New Flows reflects on that problem by considering small steps as actions that embody the common saying: the only way out is through. 

Taking a fluid and networked approach to the act of learning, Small Acts / New Flows unfolds across three interconnected parts: The Alternative School, a four-week syllabus of workshops designed and led by invited artists and collectives focusing on ecology; Workshops for Emerging Arts Professionals, a one-week programme of closed-door exchanges exploring the politics and ethics of institutional labour and sustainability in the arts; and Public Gathering, a forum convened by participants in both programmes.  

The Alternative School: Small Acts (September 7–October 6) foregrounds communities exploring issues of ecology through art and urban design via public engagement activities intended to activate a multi-sensory experience of knowledge transfer. Workshops, guided tours, and field trips anchored to the themes of “Learning from The Ground Up,” “Interspecies Coexistence,” and “Grounding in Daily Practices” will be led by artists, art practitioners and designers including Hong Kong Soil by TMML, Urban Diary, Chris Michael Owen, Fredie Chan Ho-lun, Hong Kong Bird Watching Society, Theadora Leung, Wong Pik-kei, Catherine Clover, Yip Kai-chun, Wayla Amatathammachad, Dr. Tommy Hui, Brian Wong and Wanwu Practice Group. Taking place in Para Site’s tenth-floor annex Learning Space and Hong Kong’s outlying islands, participants will learn to take small steps to connect to the living environment and with other species, resituate themselves within the ecosystem, and consider how to translate their experiences into everyday habits. Click here for the full programme schedule.

Workshops for Emerging Arts Professionals: New Flows (September 23–30) is a laboratory for emerging arts professionals to reflect on the arts ecosystem and their role and agency within it. Adopting a circular model of exchange, leading figures in the field will host exchanges and workshops in Para Site’s Learning Space alongside off-site visits, interrogating the ethics of art work, diasporic solidarity, collaborative models, institutional forms, and sustainable futures. Facilitators include Adeline Ooi, who has directed initiatives to position Hong Kong, and Asia more broadly, into a crucial art world meeting point; Mai Abu ElDahab, director of Mophradat, a non-profit association supporting artists from the Arab world, generating inventive approaches to funding, commissioning, collaborating, and gathering; Guangzhou-based artist collective BOLOHO, now participating in CHAT’s Seed to Textile programme; Cem A, the artist behind @freeze_magazine; and Sakiya, a progressive academy connecting art, science, and agriculture in Palestine and beyond. Throughout, participants will consider the idea of professionalism after professionalisation and explore ways of practising together.

Small Acts / New Flows—A Public Gathering (September 29) functions as both a culmination and point of departure. The Public Gathering is an afternoon forum that invites Alternative School and Workshops for Emerging Arts Professionals participants and facilitators to share ideas and learnings that have emerged throughout both programmes with the public, connecting ideas of collective institution building and community engagement with ecological practice. Details to be announced.

Para Site Alternative School / Workshops for Emerging Arts Professionals 2024: Small Acts / New Flows is generously supported by the S. H. Ho Foundation Limited. The programme is curated by Alice Wong and Stephanie Bailey in collaboration with Billy Tang, Celia Ho, Jessie Kwok, and Stefan Luk of Para Site.

Alice Wong is a Hong Kong-based arts practitioner, who often works as a project manager, curator and theatre producer. She held the position of Executive Director of soundpocket from 2017–2021. Projects and exhibitions Alice produced or curated include “The Shape of Monuments” (Tainan, 2024), “Vermin” (Hong Kong, 2024), “Crazy Women” (Tainan, 2022), “10 Years of ASP” (Hong Kong, 2021) and “BEING THERE 2017” (Kyoto, 2017).

Stephanie Bailey is a writer, editor, and curator from Hong Kong. She has curated Art Basel Hong Kong Conversations since 2014, where she advises on content strategy, and is currently Editor, Asia, Art Basel; global editor-at-large for Ocula Magazine, serving as editor-in-chief from 2017 to 2022; ART PAPERS contributing editor; and contributor to Art Review, e-flux Criticism, and Yishu Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, with recent words in Art Monthly, Afterall, Frieze, and Mousse. From 2012–2017, Stephanie served as senior and managing editor of Ibraaz, a platform for visual culture founded by Kamel Lazaar Foundation in 2011, for which she curated “What Can We Learn and Unlearn When We Speak Together?” in 2022, a symposium in Tunis organised for the biennial arts festival JAOU, with speakers including Joan Kee, Ho Tzu Nyen, The Otolith Group, Radio Alhara, Gabrielle Goliath, and Athi-Patra Ruga. From 2009 to 2012, she designed, implemented and directed the first BTEC-accredited Foundation Diploma in Art and Design in Greece for Doukas School, Athens, where she also taught A-Level and IB Diploma art and design.