Co-creation with Chinese Communities research group

Description

The Co-creation with Chinese Communities research group holds that solutions to the problems faced by Chinese communities need to be developed together with those communities. It works closely with Chinese students, activists, creatives and community organisations, with a focus on learning and change through creative practice, and describes its aim as generating insights that improve the lives of its local community, inform policy and develop sustainable solutions, to better accommodate Chinese communities and the unique challenges they encounter in the UK.

Its work runs across three themes. Through a pilot with students at King's College London, it co-delivers arts-based interventions with overseas Chinese organisations and assesses their impact. With feminist-, female- and queer-identifying diasporas, its events have included workshops using Chinese Female Script Calligraphy, stand-up comedy and zine-making, a weekly Feminist Reading Group in Chinese and a roundtable discussion on supporting Chinese students in the UK. Under the third, a project seeks to understand how female and queer diasporic groups use arts (such as autobiography writing, filming and performance) to resist pressures from both China and host societies, and together reimagine alternative identities and possibilities abroad.

Its activities include White Noise of Belonging, an exhibition held at King's College London in November 2025 and co-curated by the Chinese diaspora artist collectives QueerPatch and The Wishing Fountain Project, which showed over thirty works by Chinese-speaking women and queer artists; and Writing Against the Tide, an autobiographical writing programme for Chinese LGBTQIA+ and/or women-identifying communities in the UK. It works with the grassroots organisations and creatives Queer China UK, Asian Women Development Plan International (AWDPI), QueerPatch, The Wishing Fountain Project and You Liang Art, and with King's Libraries. It is led by academics from the Lau China Institute, which lists it among the selected projects on its research page, and it is one of the research groups listed by King's Global Institutes.

Currently active

Yes

Offers funding

No, this infrastructure does not provide funding.

Contact details

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University affiliation(s)

King's College London (KCL)
London

Partner Infrastructures

Lau China Institute

The Lau China Institute is a global centre for the research, study and understanding of contemporary China. The Centre aims to study both China and work with Chinese scholars and others. Research at t… read more about Lau China Institute

London

Additional Partnerships

Queer China UK; Asian Women Development Plan International (AWDPI); QueerPatch; The Wishing Fountain Project; You Liang Art