University of Sheffield · Civic Knowledge Exchange
Hong Kong Community Hub@ University of Sheffield
A shared platform connecting the University of Sheffield with Hong Kong communities through culture, storytelling and creative participation.
University of Sheffield · Civic Knowledge Exchange
A shared platform connecting the University of Sheffield with Hong Kong communities through culture, storytelling and creative participation.
About the Hub
HK Community Hub @ UoS is a civic knowledge exchange platform run from the University of Sheffield, built to strengthen social integration, cultural participation and civic belonging among Hong Kong communities in Sheffield and the wider region, however long you've called the city home.
The Hub links the University with Hong Kong community organisations, youth groups, cultural institutions and creative practitioners, drawing on established partnerships across the city. Rather than running isolated events, it builds a coordinated infrastructure: shared programming, an advisory group, and structured evaluation that turns each activity into evidence for what genuinely helps communities settle, connect and contribute.
Funded through the University's Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF) for an initial twelve-month pilot, the Hub builds directly on the existing Project Sifu and a track record of Hong Kong community cultural programming in Sheffield.
The Hub's mark is drawn from the haitang blossom, the Chinese flowering crabapple that recurs across Chinese decorative art. Among the meanings it carries is reunion, the gathering back together of people who have been apart, which felt like the right place to begin for a project about communities finding each other in a new city.
The mark is built from radiating lines. They travel inward to meet at a single centre, and the points where they converge are marked as small nodes, before the same lines open outward again into the space around them. That double movement is the whole idea. A community is made by drawing together, and it stays alive by reaching past itself, and neither motion works without the other.
At the centre sit the letters HK, held within the blossom rather than placed on top of it. Hong Kong is not an emblem the Hub displays but a starting point it grows from, one that keeps its shape while extending into the civic life of Sheffield.
What we do
Each strand feeds the next: partnership groundwork shapes the programme, and the programme generates the evidence that helps the Hub grow.
A quarterly advisory group brings together Hong Kong community organisations to guide delivery and keep programming grounded in real community need.
Participatory filmmaking workshops, youth storytelling, community screenings with discussion, and oral history work documenting community stories and lived experience, often embedded within Lunar New Year and Mid-Autumn Festival events.
Surveys, interviews and partner feedback build a clear picture of what works, reviewed together with partners and shared at a closing civic roundtable with community leaders and policymakers.
Hub Team
Hub Director
Dr Wayne Wong is a Lecturer in East Asian Studies at the University of Sheffield. He holds a PhD in Film Studies and Comparative Literature from King's College London and the University of Hong Kong. His research centres on global martial arts and action cinema, with a particular interest in their politics, aesthetics and cross-cultural circulation. He is the author of Martial Arts Ecology: Aesthetics, Philosophy, and Cinematic Mediation (Edinburgh University Press, 2026), and his work has appeared in leading journals and edited volumes, including Asian Cinema, Martial Arts Studies, Global Media and China, Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, Asian Ethnicity, Afro-Futurism in Black Panther, The Worlds of John Wick, The Cinema of Stephen Chow, and Fighting Stars: Stardom and Reception in Hong Kong Martial Arts Cinema. He serves as an editor of Martial Arts Studies, the flagship journal of the Martial Arts Studies Association (MASA), and is director of Project Sifu (2025) and Project Sifu 2 (2026), a documentary and short film empowering UK youth through martial arts cinema and collaborative filmmaking.
Wong is currently developing new strands of work with artists, curators, filmmakers and community organisations across the UK. Through film, exhibition and performance, he explores emerging forms of Hong Kong diasporic identity and the creative possibilities that arise from transnational cultural exchange.
Impact Associate
Clara Cheung is an artist-curator with a strong interest in performance art and community-based projects. Based in Sheffield, she is currently completing her PhD at the University of York, researching the history of Hong Kong's outward-facing art exhibitions between the late 1950s and 1970s.
Advisory Group
The Hub's quarterly advisory group brings together researchers, artists, practitioners and community leaders to guide delivery and keep programming grounded in real community need.
Yung-Hang Bruce Lai is a film critic, researcher and programmer from Hong Kong. He is a member of the Hong Kong Film Critics Society and Programme Director of the Festival du Film Hongkongais de Paris. He holds a PhD in Film Studies from King's College London, with research interests in Chinese-language cinema, comedy and diasporic film, and is currently a Teaching Fellow in Chinese Studies at Durham University.
Sunshine Wong Yet Chor is an art worker, researcher and facilitator, born and raised in Hong Kong. She worked there as an art teacher before moving to Berlin, where she completed her MA at Berlin Universität der Künste while curating live art events across the city; her doctoral thesis, drawing on affect and queer studies, examined the relational material of social art practices. She is Director at Bloc Projects in Sheffield, where she shapes a programme rooted in equity, embodied connection and critical care.
Phyllis Wong served with an international English-speaking church in Hong Kong for eighteen years before her retirement in 2025. Before entering pastoral ministry, she worked as a social worker and taught in the tertiary education sector. She co-founded RainLily, supporting survivors of sexual violence, and the Covenant of the Rainbow, advocating for sexual minorities, and launched a peacemaking initiative within her church supporting refugees and asylum seekers in Hong Kong. She is guided by the belief that life is a precious gift from God, and that every individual deserves an abundant life rooted in dignity, equality and freedom.
Eelyn Lee is an award-winning artist and filmmaker of dual British-Hong Kong heritage, whose work has been presented at the Barbican, Tate Modern, Whitechapel Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Palais de Tokyo, HKW, the São Paulo Architecture Biennial, the Karachi Biennial and international film festivals. Her practice blends costume, choreography, ritual and sound to explore identity, justice and multi-species migration. In response to Covid-related anti-Asian hate, she began an expansive body of work reimagining East and Southeast Asian diasporic identities, presenting Ancestral Futures 源流之後 in 2024, a street procession in honour of the first recorded Chinese people in Sheffield. eelynlee.com
Ming Hui is a community organiser and former director of a trade union for social workers in Hong Kong, bringing a dual professional background as both an educator and a social worker. She is co-founder of Re-Water, an arts and community platform launched in December 2021 through which Hong Kong culture flows through cultural diversity, freedom of expression and a philosophy of fluidity, like water. Now based in Sheffield, she has led community initiatives including the Lennon Flag Project, collaborates with partners such as Sheffield Museums on cultural celebrations, and works with theatre collective The Bare Project to bring Hong Kong narratives to life through performances inspired by the mythical figure Lo Ting (盧亭).
Tracy Lau is a Hong Kong-born applied theatre practitioner, educator and community facilitator based in Yorkshire. Her work brings together theatre, education, training and community engagement to help people connect, build confidence and share their experiences. Since moving to the UK, she has worked with Wakefield College and Swarthmore Education Centre, and contributed to the Hong Kong Advisory Board organised by Migration Yorkshire, with a continuing commitment to community development, inclusion and connection within the Hong Kong community in Yorkshire.
Gemma O'Neill is a Hong Kong Research Analyst at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.
From the Hub
A look at the workshops, screenings and community moments the Hub grows from. Click any photo to view it full size.
From the Hub
A closer look at recent moments from the Hub. Hover over a clip to watch with sound.
A highlight from Welcoming the Moon, the Hub's Mid-Autumn Festival celebration at Weston Park Museum, held on 19 September 2026.
Project Sifu 2 premiered in London at the Fighting Spirit Film Festival, Rio Cinema, on 5 September 2026.
A highlight from the UK Culture of Remembrance talk, given by Major John Lam on 22 August 2026.
The opening of the Streets on Screen exhibition, held on 20 August 2026.
Get involved
Whether you are a community member or an organisation, there is a clear way to take part.
Join a filmmaking workshop, a storytelling session, or one of our screenings and discussions. No experience needed, just an interest in sharing or hearing Hong Kong community stories.
See upcoming eventsIf your organisation works with Hong Kong or wider East and Southeast Asian communities in the North of England, we would welcome a conversation about joining the advisory group.
Get in touchUpcoming events
Our first confirmed events are below, with more from the programme to follow throughout the year.
Project Sifu 2 follows Eric, a shy university student whose love of kung fu cinema draws him from behind the camera onto the training floor, exploring creativity, confidence, friendship and belonging through martial arts and filmmaking. Filmed at the University of Sheffield and directed by Dr Wayne Wong, the screening is followed by a discussion and Q&A with the Project Sifu team. 2–3.15pm, Nelson Mandela Auditorium, Students' Union. Free, booking required. Book your free place.
Past events
A look back at recent talks and exhibitions from the Hub. Click any photo to view it full size.
19 September 2026
A free festival for ESEA Heritage Month at Weston Park Museum, with craft, performance and storytelling around moon-related traditions.
20 August – 18 September 2026
Re-imagining Hong Kong and Sheffield through cinema: a showcase of photography and mixed media art by project collaborators Ming, Sony, Shan Cheng, Nam Huh, Ayesha Iqbal, John Lau, Claire Li, Johnathan Liu, Ernie Tay and AY Tung, at C&G Artpartment, 71 Holme Lane.
12 September 2026
Filmmaker Carrie Shen travelled from London to share a selection of her short films at the Hub's first screening, followed by a Q&A with Dr Wayne Wong.
5 September 2026
Project Sifu 2, a narrative short film directed by Dr Wayne Wong, premiered in London at the Fighting Spirit Film Festival, Rio Cinema.
Closed 30 August 2026
An open call for poems, submitted or a favourite, about the moon, lunar phases or moon-related traditions, for display at Weston Park Museum's Welcoming the Moon festival on 19 September. All regions, cultures, eras and languages were welcome.
22 August 2026
A serving British Army officer with Hong Kong heritage discussed the military history of Hong Kong, wartime commemorations including Liberation Day, and the Act of Remembrance, at Lecture Theatre 02, The Diamond.
Closed 20 August 2026
An open call for Community Advisory Board members to help strengthen the Hong Kong community in Sheffield. No previous board experience required.
Contact
For event queries, partnership conversations, or press enquiries, reach out directly and we'll get back to you.
Project Lead
Dr Wayne Wong
Lecturer, East Asian Studies
School of Languages, Arts and Societies
Impact Associate
Clara Cheung
PhD Candidate, History of Art
University of York
Address
University of Sheffield
Western Bank, Sheffield, S10 2TN