About

The Creative Livelihoods-project was a research project conducted by the the Academy of Visual Arts (AVA) of Hong Kong Baptist University under the leadership of Associate Professor Mr. Peter Benz. The primary objective of the project was to get insight into the long-term professional development of graduates from Creative Arts-related undergraduate programmes in Hong Kong: their respective starting points, their careers, their income situation, their current creative practice, and their general livelihoods. It was the project’s aim to build up comprehensive evidence on the career paths of creative graduates in Hong Kong, and through this to become able to generate a comprehensive picture of the situation of visual arts practitioners and the visual arts scene in the territory. 

Phase I of Creative Livelihoods mainly consisted of a large-scale longitudinal survey of graduates from 2001 to 2015 from six creative undergraduate programmes offered by Hong Kong institutions:

BA Fine Arts (CUHK)  

BA (Hons) Design (PolyU HK)  

BA (Hons) Creative Media (CityU HK)  

BA (Hons) Visual Arts (HKBU)

BSSC (Hons) in Communication – Digital Graphic Communication (HKBU) 

BA Fine Arts (HK Art School)

As part of the project it was established that 4,953 students graduated from the six identified programmes in the period of 2001 to 2015; of 3,432 of these we were able to get contact information, i.e. could approach them for the purpose of our subsequent survey. About 1,800 graduates submitted information to the online survey; 596 completed the full survey of about 45 detailed questions. The content of this website is based on the collated data of these 596 graduates, with each of the “dots” on the homepage representing one specific individual creative graduate.

Phase II of the project continued the investigation of the livelihood situation of Hong Kong’s creative at more in depth level through focus group studies and dedicated interviews. It focused especially on gender-related issues in the creative and cultural sectors in Hong Kong.

You may download the full report on the outcomes of Creative Livelihoods here.

Creative Livelihoods, Phase I was funded with a project grant of the Hong Kong Arts Development Council (ADC). Phase II is funded by a General Research Fund of the Research Grant Committee (RGC) of Hong Kong government.

The online survey of Phase I was conducted by the Centre for the Advancement of Social Sciences Research (CASR) of HKBU.