Bridging The Gaps Restarted

Welcome back to Bridging the Gaps!

We are pleased to announce that after nearly two years pause caused by COVID pandemic travel restriction, Bridging the Gaps has restarted! Although COVID travel restrictions still poses challenges to UK-China collaboration, Bridging the Gaps is starting in April 2022 and will complete by the end of March 2024.

Whilst Bridging the Gaps was on pause during the COVID, Dr. Ma led the team further bid and successfully obtained two UKRI funding on

The UK-China Creative Partnerships: Responding to the Longer-term Impacts of COVID-19, Song of the Female Textile Workers, UK-China digital connectivity (2020-2021) and

Understanding the Future of UK China R+I in the Creative Industries, Song of the Female Textile Workers, past, present and the future (2022-2023). This is the fifth consecutive AHRC award Dr. Ma and her team has obtained.

With the global shutdown, both projects were produced by the team across UK and China 100% online. Song of the Female Textile Workers (2021-2022) was successfully completed in December 2021 with outputs include a mixed reality film screened at Leeds Industrial Museum, Stage@Leeds as well as Shanghai Textile Museum and Shanghai Yue Opera House. Song the Future (2022-2023) sees the development of participant-led mobile performance staged at Leeds Industrial Museum. The series of performances gained wide recognition from the UK-China academic experts as well as audiences as key references in understanding the shared pain in community destruction and the rise of the creative industries across the two nations.

Bridging the Gaps will see adjustments made to the practice-led research plan and expected outcomes: whilst the original plan was to link Shanghai rural and urban heritage sites through developing digital Chinese intangible cultural heritage (ICH) performances, the adjusted plan will utilise various digital platforms to link UK-China heritage sites and communities. There will be a series of workshops and one symposium in the coming months discussing the following objectives:

- Audiences shared understanding of UK-China creative industries transitional stage - from Industrial decline to Post-Industrial digital rise;

- Engage wide UK and China creative sectors through the digital performance making;

- Explore the UK digital Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) China market entry strategy.