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		Message from Professor Chung Ling Dean of Arts, HKBU	December, 2011
		The Faculty of Arts has been regarded as a "faculty for creativity". We place considerable emphasis on creating a rich cultural environment with the aim of nurturing students' imagination and sensitivity, which are important in helping the students excel in their professional lives, whilst a strong sense of empathy and understanding is vital to forming successful interpersonal relationships. Five out of the seven teaching units in the faculty offer courses about artistic and literary creativity - Chinese Language and Literature, English Language and Literature, Humanities, Music, and the Language Centre. With the advantage of having over 20 full-time faculty members who are established writers, composers and arts performers, the Faculty has an established track record of nurturing students' creativity in literature and music.
		The Faculty also organises various cultural activities for students, the local community and for writers from around the world. Creativity-inspiring activities such as "The Dream of the Red Chamber Award: The World's Distinguished Novel in Chinese", "The Lion Rock Poetry Reading" (alternating between classical and contemporary Chinese poetry) and "The Intervarsity Creative Writing Competition" are held to enhance literary cultivation in Hong Kong. In addition, the International Writers Workshop launched in 2004 cultivates literary creativity by organising writing workshops, public lectures, symposia and creative writing recitals, featuring internationally acclaimed Writers-in-Residence and overseas Visiting Writers. In the past eight years, over 70 international writers from more than 40 countries were invited.
		Three cost centres of the University received special commendation from the then Research Grants Council Chair, in the Research Assessment Exercise 2006: "The Hong Kong Baptist University scored high in respect of Cost Centre 45 (English Language & Literature) (91.67%), 48 (Translation) (87.5%) and 51 (Other Arts/Humanities [Religion and Philosophy]) (86.36%), reflecting its solid strength in the humanities." In the past decade, 40 General Research Fund proposals of our faculty members received funding from the Research Grants Council. Most of the research projects focus on Cross-Cultural Studies, Language Studies and Literature, Classical Chinese Culture, and Creative Writing and Performance. The Faculty established an incentive scheme for faculty members to invite renowned scholar-editors as consultants on the focused research areas to HKBU to exchange the latest research and publishing information.
		The Arts Faculty also has quite a few world-class scholars such as Professor Ge Xiaoyin and Zhang Hongsheng (in Chinese literature), Professor Martha Cheung (in translation), Professor Lo Kwai-cheung (in cultural studies), etc.
		With the background, history and experience of developing creativity and cross-cultural studies, the Arts Faculty could join hands with the Institute of Creativity to create an enriched environment for students, colleagues, and the public to explore and cultivate the world of creativity.
		Professor Chung Ling Dean of Arts Hong Kong Baptist University