Hong Kong Youth Arts Foundation celebrates 25 years of exploration and organic growth in visual and performing arts

The foundation organises about 100 projects every year. Founder Lindsey McAlister talks about her favourite shows, how things have grown over the past 25 years and how she maintains private and corporate sponsorship

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Lindsey McAlister founded the Hong Kong Youth Arts Foundation 25 years ago. Photo: Nora Tam

Published: 10:47am, 19 May 2018Updated: 6:28pm, 20 May 2018

“I think you miss out on a lot of opportunities if you have a very fixed idea of where you are going to be in a certain period of time,” says Hong Kong Youth Arts Foundation (YAF) founder Lindsey McAlister.

“The wonderful thing about YAF is that we have been able to sort of meander into things that seem interesting to explore, and find out if they’ll work.”

Next Thursday at The Peninsula hotel, YAF (formerly known as the Hong Kong Youth Arts Festival) will celebrate 25 years of “meandering” through an extraordinary range of visual and performing arts projects.

McAlister says she isn’t much of a strategist, preferring to base decisions on how she feels. Photo: Nora Tam

A gala dinner at The Peninsula is being held to thank its friends and sponsors. Nothing that YAF has achieved, McAlister stresses, would have been possible without them.

Her list of long-term supporters includes the Hong Kong Jockey Club, Standard Chartered Bank, the Kadoorie Foundation, and Swire Properties, the last of which supplies McAlister and her creative and administrative team with office and studio space in Quarry Bay.

YAF is now a Hong Kong institution, but its offices do not have the atmosphere of one. And despite the letters OBE and JP after her name there’s nothing institutional about McAlister.