Zurich's performance in Hong Kong has found a large and interested audience. Around 4000 people attended the cultural and scientific events. The festival hub at Times Square and the Swiss Design Market at K11 attracted around 50,000 visitors. The Zurich institutions used the festival to consolidate existing cooperations and initiate new projects.

From 21 to 29 October 2017, the festival "Zurich meets Hong Kong – A Festival of Two Cities" took place. With over 4,000 participants at more than 30 events and 50,000 visitors to the Festival Hub and the Swiss Design Market, the economic, scientific and cultural exchange between the two metropolises has been expanded and strengthened. The feedback from the audience was numerous and very positive. In addition, around six million contacts were generated via the social media channels. The local media dedicated several articles to the festival.

Festival Hub immerses visitors in Zurich's virtual reality

In the "Zurich meets Hong Kong" festival hub, which was centrally located in the Times Square shopping center in Hong Kong, visitors were able to learn more about the festival and fly over Zurich in a virtual world. ETH Zurich demonstrated its latest research in the field of augmented reality and creativity. The Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) used a flight simulator to show how augmented reality simplifies the control of aircraft and makes it safer.

Music and dance played a prominent role as connecting elements. Every evening there was a performance: street music in front of the Hong Kong Arts Center, a telematic concert played synchronously in Zurich and Hong Kong by the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) and the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble, jazz with the Swiss band Florian Favre Trio and a performance by Brandy Butler & the Brokenhearted together with the legendary Hong Kong indie rock band Chochukmo. The film programme supervised by the International Short Film Festival Winterthur – including a short film programme on the oeuvre of H.R. Giger and the documentary "DARK STAR HR GIGER'S World" by Belinda Sallin – was very well attended. Visual art and urban development were the focus of the two exhibitions in the Connecting Space Hong Kong of the ZHdK. The cultural programme also included the dance performance «One Table Two Chairs», choreographed by Danny Yung, one of Hong Kong's most influential artists.

The wide-ranging scientific programme shed light on various aspects of current developments in the economy and society. While the City of Winterthur and the Vocational Training Council of Hong Kong discussed the importance of practice- and labour market-oriented education, the University of Zurich focused on events on healthy ageing, the future of privacy and the economic and legal challenges of modern technologies in finance (FinTech). At the interface of virtual and augmented reality, creativity and art, ETH Zurich and Baptist University of Hong Kong presented a visionary outlook on software developments that blur the boundaries between the real world and computer programs.

In order to make the various events accessible to a wider audience via social media, the festival has entered into a cooperation with the Audiovisual Media course of the ZHdK (Cast). Eleven students and three lecturers travelled to Hong Kong for the duration of the festival and were supported by local translators. With the media text, photography, animation and film, they accompanied and documented the festival on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter. Passers-by were interviewed, smaller reports on event topics were created and events were broadcast live. The final film of the festival was produced by Cast and gives a good insight into the festival.

Both well-maintained and newly established contacts resulted in some concrete projects and planned activities: the Hong Kong International Film Festival and the International Short Film Festival Winterthur are planning further exchange projects, ETH is planning an in-depth cooperation with Baptist University in Hong Kong and has activated alumni in the region and inspired them again for ETH, the ZHdK is planning another forum with the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority on transdisciplinary cooperation between art and science in 2019, the University of Zurich will work more closely with various local universities in research and expand student exchanges, and the ZHAW School of Engineering and Hong Kong Polytechnic University will expand the existing cooperation agreements.