Strolling in the Huashan 1914 Creative Park in Taipei City in a Sunday afternoon, visitors might find themselves surrounded by teenagers skateboarding, attracted by a group of dancers rehearsing on an open stage, or sitting in one of the yuppie cafes enjoying a good read.
While any urban planner would be thrilled to witness Huashan’s transition from an abandoned distillery to Taiwan’s future creative hub, some local artists, however, still have second thoughts about the entire project, especially the government’s partnership with private companies.
The park, despite its now chic appearance, bears a name that invokes the colonial past (1895-1945). The area where the former sake factory is located has been known since those times as Huashan, Chinese for Kabayama, after Kabayama Sukenori, the first Japanese governor-general of Taiwan.
After World War II, the distillery was run by the state-owned Taiwan Tobacco and Wine Monopoly Bureau for over 40 years, before the plant was relocated to Taipei County’s Linkou in 1987.
In 1997, an avant-garde theater troupe stumbled upon the deserted factory, and started rehearsing and performing there, igniting a controversy over illegal squatting on government property. The local artistic community then led a successful push for the factory to become a public space for cultural activities: reminisced Tang Huang-chen, a performance artist who was among the original artist-activists. “If it weren’t for us, this place would have become the site for the new Legislative Yuan,” she said.
Now, under the supervision of the Council for Cultural Affairs, Taiwan Cultural-Creative Development Co. Ltd. has been running the park since 2007. Moreover, government initiatives have further stimulated investment and activity in the park: The Executive Yuan designated the cultural creative sector one of Taiwan’s six key emerging industries in 2009, and the Act for the Development of Cultural and Creative Industries having cleared the Legislature this August.
Under the CCA’s development plan, a rundown warehouse will soon be turned into an art cinema center, 13 old houses will be renovated and a new 10-story building will come into service as an incubation center for creative projects and a trading platform for investors and artists, according to Fang Jy-shiuh, a CCA department director overseeing the project.
Different business models are encouraging private participation in public infrastructure development at Huashan. The Taiwan Film & Culture Association will run the cinema on an operate-transfer contract for 15 years, before it is handed back to the CCA. TCCD will carry out a 3.5-hectare incubation center plan according to a rehabilitate-operate-transfer scheme. A subsidiary will construct the new building on a build-operate-transfer plan.
However, local artist groups are worried the private corporations are involved solely for profit, Tang noted. “Creativity has no scientific formulas; it does not replicate by itself like bacteria in an incubator,” she added.
“Judging by the way the company runs this place, we worry that it is more interested in seeking easy profit than taking pains to cultivate creative forces,” Tang said. She stressed that the core mission of the cultural creative sector should not be industry, or the franchise shops selling derivatives of artistic work, but creative brains, who need ample resources and space to experiment. Putting artists and businesspeople together in an incubation center is not the way to go, she argued.
In response to artists’ calls for the diversion of more resources into the encouragement of future talent, the supervising administration has implemented several new plans.
TCCD will be required to offer rent discounts in the park to nonprofit organizations and art groups. The CCA will be allotted 10 days per year free of charge to put on cultural events, and up-and-coming artists will be provided free exhibition space, Fang explained.
“Huashan’s resources will be made available to the creative workers who need them the most,” she said.
Free public lectures and workshops on how to turn creativity into marketable products will provide artists with important know-how. “Passing down the knowledge is more important than selling the goods,” Fang pointed out.
The CCA also plans to provide matchmaking opportunities bringing artists, filmmakers and designers together with investors and sponsors, especially international ones, to help creative minds get their projects financed.
“There are two major challenges before us,” said Chen Fu-yen, TCCD general manager. “One is to bring new resources into the old park site, and the other is to create value out of the fusion of different creative fields.”
Chen cited the Taiwan-based yoga apparel and equipment brand Easyoga, whose Huashan concept store opened in May, as a good example of a horizontal alliance. The young brand’s creators sought out high-tech labs for ideal materials, worked with high-end designers on its outfits, and collaborated with kinematics experts on the ergonomics of its equipment.
“Given their often smaller scale, Taiwanese creative brands should work together to create greater opportunities,” Chen said.
In line with this approach, TCCD has introduced gift shops, restaurants, galleries and a live music house, making the park one of the hottest rendezvous for young Taipei citizens. Recently opened dining places include a pizzeria, a nostalgic Taiwanese buffet, an Italian bistro and several design cafes, all attracting more visitor traffic to the park.
A fully booked schedule of activities spanning Chinese opera, furniture design exhibitions and tea-making workshops has encouraged participation from creative workers, investors and the public alike.
In September, Huashan hosted the 2010 Taiwan Designers’ Week, with over 350 local designers, most working individually, showcasing their ideas to fellow designers and potential sponsors. “Exposure to and competition from the works of others stimulates creative minds,” Chen noted. “Nobody can say for sure that our plans for Huashan will work, but we’ll just have to make them happen.”
Artists will be showing their stuff and exchanging ideas with other creative minds at the Huashan Living Arts Festival Oct. 2 to 31, encompassing music, contemporary and traditional drama, dance and acrobatics, with hundreds of performances, workshops, forums and a market. (THN)
Write to Kwangyin Liu at kwangyin.liu@mail.gio.gov.tw