Art and Culture Outreach, ACO in brief (actually the two Chinese characters mean the ‘birds of art’), has started to contribute our efforts to the development of art and culture since 2003 when started to help the Dawei Charitable Foundation turn some (14 then and 20 now) residential units of Foo Tak Building (FTB) into art/cultural spaces (A/C spaces) letting artist/cultural entities in need have space to work at a lease that is very affordable for them.
2005 – 2010, ACO turned a unit on 14/F FTB into “Artist-in-Residency”. It allowed overseas art and cultural practitioners accommodated in the unit at the lowest possible daily or monthly rent, in a hope that more of their time and budget could be reserved for interacting with the local art and culture circle. We received 30 applications on average per year.
Subsequently, ACO officially came into picture in 2008 with an independent bookstore ACO_Books instituted of FTB. Other than selling serious English publications on art and contemporary culture, ACO has started to take up part of the building management work for the A/C spaces and to let the bookstore be used for other cultural activities by all kinds of art and cultural entities within and without FTB other than its being a bookstore.
ACO website: http://www.aco.hk/