BRINGING THE HEART OF ASIA TO THE UNITED KINGDOM & BEYOND.

Since its establishment in November 2012, The UK branch of Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture has worked to introduce Taiwanese culture to audiences in the UK and beyond, supports Taiwanese artists in bringing their works to new shores, and helped to facilitate Taiwan-UK cultural collaboration and understanding.

Through a deeper understanding of Taiwanese culture, we hope that you will have a deeper understanding of Taiwan!

The Cultural Division is a branch of the Taiwanese diplomatic mission, the Taipei Representative Office in the UK, headed by Representative Kelly W. Hsieh.

For more information, please visit:

https://www.roc-taiwan.org/uk_en/

Taiwan and the UK enjoy a close partnership with frequent, mutually beneficial exchanges in arts and culture. Taiwan remains a crucial destination for renowned UK-based artists and organisations. For instance, internationally acclaimed choreographer Akram Khan and the Victoria & Albert Museum have been invited to perform and exhibit at some of Taiwan’s most prestigious cultural venues in the past years.

The UK has also hosted and continues to host many of Taiwan’s top artists and creative professionals, presenting to British audiences the best cultural content Taiwan has to offer. The Cultural Division has partnered with organisations to host performances and exhibitions comprising a wide range of disciplines to showcase Taiwanese talent such as the Ju Percussion Group and the Cloud Gate Dance Theatre which have performed in or been showcased at the UK’s most iconic cultural institutions and festivals. These include the Hayward Gallery at Southbank, Liverpool Biennial, King’s College London, London Craft Week, Glastonbury Festival, Tate Modern, Whitechapel Gallery, Barbican Centre, London Design Biennale, Delfina Foundation, and many more. In addition to these exchanges, the quality and calibre of Taiwanese cultural content have been widely recognised by British audiences and critics. The Taiwanese author Wu Ming-Yi, for example, had his book “The Stolen Bicycle” long-listed in the Man Booker International Prize in 2018, while Taiwan’s Cloud Gate Dance Theatre was named the Outstanding Company at the 19th National Dance Awards in 2019 and is due to perform again in the UK in 2023.

Taiwan’s cultural content has gained prominence in the UK in recent years. For example, in 2022, the Edinburgh Taiwan Film Festival, in cooperation with several local organizations, expanded to a year-long programme of events that included a tour to smaller British and Scottish cities which allowed different audiences to get to know Taiwanese films. In 2023, Edinburgh Taiwan Film Festival will run its new edition. Meanwhile, Manchester-based arts and cultural complex HOME is presenting its second series of Taiwanese films in 2023. In addition, London East Asia Film Festival has also been bringing a number of the latest contemporary Taiwanese films to London in October. In 2023, new projects and continued partnerships have brought a more multifaceted view of Taiwanese cinematic culture to British audiences. For instance, Hong Kong Film Festival UK has partnered with the Ministry of Culture, Taiwan, in 2023 to include a section called “A Mirror Image: HK X Taiwan Documentaries,” which aims to introduce representative productions from Taiwan and Hong Kong to the UK audiences and explore how documentaries respond to social and environmental changes in the two regions to British Audiences with screening in London, Manchester, and Edinburgh. Furthermore, Taiwanese cinema in the UK is not only varied in genres and historical periods, but it also contributes to broaden the boundaries of inclusivity and human rights. For instance, in 2023, the Ministry of Culture continued the partnership with Queer East Festival, which showcases queer movies, short films and performances every year to make British audiences more aware of the LGBTQI+ experience of East Asian communities. Regarding contemporary art, In May and June 2022, Tate Modern presented Lee Mingwei’s Our Labyrinth, the first time that the museum’s iconic Turbine Hall has been dedicated to a Taiwanese artist. From February 2023, works by Taiwanese artists Li Fang have been shown in the renowned Whitechapel Gallery in East London as part of the major exhibition Action, Gesture, Paint, bringing together 80 female artists from across the world from the Abstract Expressionist movement. In February 2023, The Cultural Division partnered with Hayward Gallery at Southbank Centre which started hosting Taiwanese artist Michael Lin’s commission to reimagine the Gallery’s café. Furthermore, Delfina Foundation continues its partnership with the Cultural Division in 2023 to offer a residency for Taiwanese artists and curators. In the field of literature, Taiwan has continued its collaboration with the British Centre for Literary Translation (BCLT) to promote the Chinese-to-English Literary Translation Workshop.

Scotland has also become an essential hub for Taiwanese culture. Since 2014, Taiwan has presented the best performing arts programme under the name of Taiwan Season to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, a global artistic and cultural phenomenon. In 2022, the ninth edition of Taiwan Season has launched four performance teams, including Diabolo Dance Theatre, the Anarchy Dance Theatre by Chou Kuan-Jou, Shinehouse Theatre, and Hung Dance. They not only received outstanding box office results, but also gained recognition from mainstream media and art critics such as The Guardian and The Scotsman. Taiwan also received the award for the Summerhall venue’s most unforgettable shows, the “Spirit of the Fringe” award, and many more. At the same time, the Cultural Division held a series of related forums, both in-person and online, focusing on the three central and contemporary themes of experimenting with hybrid forms, female visibility and climate change, which for the first time also became an official programme of the Fringe Festival.