Creative community arts and entrepreneurship: A case study from Hong Kong

The Arts Bus: On the Move! project was an innovative and creative example of a partnership between a university and a commercial company to promote the arts and to physically bring the arts to the wider community. Run over several months in 2011, it involved 20 buses that travelled around Hong Kong with special body designs of children’s art works, and two others that carried out arts activities in community venues. The project successfully engaged a local transportation company in supporting the development of community arts education. It also provided an opportunity to showcase student creativity to the community and was enterprising in creating a mobile venue for a company to display its corporate social responsibility (CSR) backed by the expertise of a higher education institution. The project not only benefited the school community but also local artists and musicians by giving them exposure to a new audience, assisting them in building brand equity and that of their work with potential arts consumers. The company regarded the project as an exciting new way to implement their CSR policy. This paper will discuss the partnership forged and how such a project might be considered a positive example of entrepreneurship that brings together both partners and the community to achieve their particular goals.