The panel on showing care in society examined diverse manifestations of care across architectural, cultural, and consumer contexts, highlighting the intersections of environment, identity, and industry.
Linda Kopitz explored how care can be integrated into architectural design and the atmospheres of built environments, emphasizing the resonance of care in creating ‘felt spaces.’
Pang Laikwan and Li Cho-kiu Joseph analyzed Hong Kong’s Ocean Terminal as a site of colonial modernity, illustrating how a new cultural identity emerged through depoliticized public spaces during a transitional period.
Margaret Hillenbrand critiqued the cosmetological industry’s impact in China through contemporary art, questioning how art can express care without judgment towards individuals shaped by aesthetic norms.
Tommy Tse addressed the fashion industry’s environmental impact, exploring the circularity of wardrobe items and the nuanced consumption practices of diverse consumer groups, advocating for sustainable fashion practices informed by cultural and social factors.
Collectively, these papers underscored the importance of integrating care into societal structures and practices, fostering a more thoughtful and sustainable approach to community and environmental interactions.
About the project
Our future is marred by effects of climate change, environmental degradation, inequality and political polarisation. In the face of these insurmountable challenges, how do we keep hope and engender change? How do we teach people to care so that we can collectively work towards better futures and seed world-making capacities? How do we learn to tend to the invisible and the inaudible relations between humans and non-humans that make up our world and to create networks where we recognise such interdependence? And how do we organise, cultivate, drive and sustain actions that are equitable and support the diversity and viability of all? In short, how can we make hope possible rather than despair convincing (Williams 1989).
Refusing to give in to the doom and gloom, I gathered the movers and shakers from across the globe and asked them what it takes to find the silver lining in this age of polycrisis. “Rehearsing Futures – pedagogies of hope” took place from the 15-17th May 2025 at HKBU and the outlying island of Peng Chau. Academics, community leaders and creative practitioners from Hong Kong, Singapore, the Netherlands, Canada and the UK joined forces to envision better futures and shared ideas to create a roadmap for change in teaching, research and social action.
Rehearsing Futures focuses on the two senses of rehearsing: the practice – as in the methods and pedagogies; as well as the rehearsal – the repetition, preparation and implementation of such methods. Change points to action, but it also requires practice and repetition; it is an emergent phenomena, which we need to prepare for (Wheatley and Frieze 2006; Bateson 2022).
