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The Secretary for Home Affairs, Mr Tsang Tak-sing; the President of the Cultural Affairs Bureau of the Macau Special Administrative Region (SAR), Mr Ung Vai-meng; and the Deputy Director of the Department of Culture of Guangdong Province, Mr Gu Minqiang, attended the 16th Greater Pearl River Delta Cultural Co-operation Meeting held in Hong Kong today (June 19).
About 100 delegates including officials and representatives of the relevant arts and cultural authorities and organisations in Hong Kong, Guangdong and Macau joined the meeting and related activities.
"Through the close co-operation between the three places, we are confident to further develop the arts and cultural sectors of the three places by expanding exchange networks, strengthening co-operation in performing arts programmes, art events and festivals, and cultivating and grooming of young talents in the arts and cultural industries," Mr Tsang said in his concluding remarks.
He also emphasised that the three places will continue to strengthen exchanges and co-operation on cultural and creative industries, public libraries, intangible cultural heritage and connections between public cultural service mechanisms. Through the enhancement of the co-operation mechanism, the three places will also bring about new opportunities for collaboration on performing arts, arts and cultural exhibitions and training of arts and cultural talents.
The key achievements of co-operation among the three places include the development of the Regional Museum Pass for Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau with a view to further building audiences in the region by encouraging pass holders to visit the museums in the three places, thereby providing greater convenience to the public.
The second achievement is to foster youth exchange among the three places. Since 2009, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Youth Cultural Exchange has been held six times, involving a total of 1,000 young participants. A variety of cultural exchange activities have commenced for university students of the three places.
The third achievement is the successful development of a mobile application for the map of cultural information in the Greater Pearl River Delta, which expands the mobile functions of the Greater Pearl River Delta Cultural Information Net. The new mobile application makes use of a map as an interface to provide users with services such as positioning, searching, transportation modes and a ticketing platform, and enables users to browse cultural information of Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau with ease.
Another key development is on training and exchange of talents. In the past year, the three places have fostered training of professional talents by organising a series of study and reciprocal visits as well as the third Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau museum forum.
On the fifth area of achievement, major joint cultural exhibitions of the three places are planned proactively in a continuous manner, and through the co-operation of joint commission of artistic creation and touring of performances, the performance of more high-quality artistic productions in the three places will be facilitated to promote outstanding creative works.
The Department of Culture of Guangdong Province, the Home Affairs Bureau of the Hong Kong SAR and the Cultural Affairs Bureau of the Macau SAR have established a cultural framework within the Greater Pearl River Delta region. An agreement on cultural co-operation between Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau was signed in August 2003 and six working groups have been set up to implement and follow up on the recommendations for co-operation in different areas.
The sessions of the six working groups were held yesterday afternoon (June 18) to discuss specific topics, namely exchanges for performing artists and co-organisation of cultural programmes, exchange of cultural information, co-operation in museum services, co-operation and exchange in public libraries, intangible cultural heritage, and co-operation of cultural and creative industries.
Ends/Friday, June 19, 2015
Issued at HKT 19:31
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