Press Release

HKBU receives largest single donation ever to build the Jockey Club Campus of Creativity

Thursday, 26 Nov 2020

Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) received a HK$452 million donation from The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust for the development of a new campus that will double the university's student residential places and add a state-of-the-art creative hub. This is the largest single donation ever received by HKBU.

The Jockey Club Campus of Creativity will boast four blocks of residential colleges that form the Village CARE plus the Jockey Club Creative Hub featuring state-of-the-art facilities for music, film, television, video games and other creative disciplines.

The new campus will stand as a towering icon of creativity education and also an icon of new living-learning communities delivering the best student experience and enhancing the university's research excellence as set out in its Institutional Strategic Plan 2018-2028.

In recognition of the support from The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, a Naming Ceremony of the new Campus was held today (26 November). The ceremony was officiated by Ms Michelle Li Mei-sheung, Permanent Secretary for Education of the HKSAR Government; Mr Philip N L Chen, Chairman of The Hong Kong Jockey Club; Mr Carlson Tong (who joined the ceremony online), Chairman of the University Grants Committee; Dr Clement Chen Cheng-jen, Chairman of the Council and the Court of HKBU; and Professor Roland T Chin, President and Vice-Chancellor of HKBU.

In his welcoming remarks, Dr Clement Chen Cheng-jen said that HKBU is immensely grateful to The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust for its donation in support of the Jockey Club Campus of Creativity.

"This brand new campus, which is currently under construction, will enable the University to prepare young people with the innovative impulses and creative thinking that the 21st century demands. It will also enable us to realise our goals of achieving research excellence and providing the best student experience," said Dr Chen. "The great contribution from The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust is an emphatic endorsement of HKBU's commitment and its efforts to provide a quality education."

"The Hong Kong Jockey Club's support reflects its strong commitment to the betterment of society, which is the Club's sole purpose," said Mr Philip N L Chen, in his address at the occasion. "The Jockey Club Campus of Creativity will not only nurture the creativity of our young people but supply a pipeline of talent for Hong Kong's creative industries, where our city has a well-deserved reputation for excellence."

Located near the University's School of Chinese Medicine and occupying a site area of 7,430 square metres, the Jockey Club Campus of Creativity will be a vertically configured campus. The four blocks of student residences form the Village CARE, which stands for Creative Arena for Residential Education.

The Jockey Club Creative Hub will provide teaching, learning and research space, housing HKBU's Department of Music and the Creative Media and Practice Cluster. It will be equipped with state-of-the-art facilities for creative disciplines. A prominent facility is the Jockey Club White Box Experimental Space, an immersive space for scientific and artistic research, which is the first of its kind in Asia.

Village CARE will provide 1,726 hostel places. It adopts a new model of residential education that seamlessly integrates teaching, learning and student residential space.

"The new campus opens a new chapter in HKBU's history. The doubling of student residential places will be crucial to students' whole person development while the creative hub will put HKBU on the world map of higher education in creativity. It will provide a vibrant environment where residents can mingle and interact, facilitating the cross-fertilisation of ideas among students and scholars from a variety of disciplines," said President Roland Chin.

The Jockey Club Creative Hub also endeavours to serve as an incubator for the creative industries, engage in knowledge exchange to benefit society, and serve the community. With the support from The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, a wide range of community and industry engagement programmes – including the Jockey Club Music Education Enhancement Programme, the Jockey Club Community Engagement Programmes in Music, the Jockey Club Creative Industries Collaborative Scheme, and the Jockey Club Creative Arts Incubation Programme – will be launched to promote the development of the creative industries in Hong Kong. The Hub will provide space for outreach programmes, partner with local non-governmental organisations to provide quality training to musical talent, and offer expert experience and up-to-date pedagogical knowledge to enhance music teaching and learning. A Pre-College Music Academy will also be launched for young talent development through international partnership with world-class universities.

To support the University's drive to groom creative and future-ready students, the Jockey Club Music Scholarships for Young Talents and the Jockey Club Creative Industries Scholarships will also be introduced.

In his address, Mr Carlson Tong said that he was most delighted by HKBU's move to sharpen its edge in the creative industries: "With solid strengths in communications and music, there will be endless opportunities for HKBU to embark on such exciting inter-disciplinary endeavours. I also have high hopes that the co-creation space in the Creative Hub will foster inter-institutional collaboration to achieve greater synergy in the discipline."

Echoing that sentiment, President Roland Chin said: "The Jockey Club Creative Hub will engage in international collaboration and serve as an engine for generating innovative ideas that can solve problems for and with society, benefiting HKBU students, the local community and Hong Kong society at large."

Construction of the Jockey Club Campus of Creativity was started in the second quarter of 2020 for completion in 2024. It will contribute in a timely manner to the Government's efforts to ramp up the growth of Hong Kong's cultural and creative industries.

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