BN Creativity Awards 2025

Being Neighbourly supports the arts through expanded awards.

Author/ Being Neighbourly
6 October 2025

In a city that’s inundated with award ceremonies, Being Neighbourly has launched its very own — the Creativity Awards 2025, making it the first set of awards honouring the Visual arts and photography in Hong Kong.

This move is in step with the importance in which Being Neighbourly holds the Arts in general —as a conduit for pause in a saturated environment and to better health and well-being, and builds on our November 2024 exhibition ‘Transitions’ at the Hong Kong Visual Arts Centre — which was our first entrance into the exhibition space.

The six day-event featured 10 artists from five countries showing work under the theme of ‘Transitions’ and the sub-themes of transitions in body, society and place.

The event featured one-to-one artist talks with Carol Man, Louise Soloway Chan, and Peter Sung, who went on to win the ‘Best Artist award 2024’, for his triptych of photos highlighting the wealth gap in Hong Kong. It also provided a panel discussion with Soloway Chan, Lindsey McAlister OBE and Andreas von Buddenbrock and artist led tours with Sung, Soloway Chan, Francesco Lietti and Bharat Khemlani. Moderators included Nicole Chabot, founder of Being Neighbourly, Zabrina Lo of Tatler and Shivang Jhunjhunwalla of Young Soy Gallery.

For adult and child art enthusiasts there were workshops in painting, collage and Being Neighbourly’s trademark Paper Bag Art workshop, which has since been delivered in collaboration with Helping Hand, Harmony House and Bookazine.

This year’s Creativity Awards expand on last year’s Best Artist award, to include new categories of Best Art Museum in Hong Kong, Best Art Gallery in Hong Kong and Best Art Studio in Hong Kong in step with Being Neighbourly’s dedication in celebrating the efforts and achievements of art providers in the territory across the scale.

Fair Process

To ensure fairness, a notice for nominations went out in August asking the public to vote in each category. This nomination stage is currently being followed by a selection of gold, silver and bronze winners across each of the four categories by three expert judges, including the winner of last year’s prize. This is prevent the awards becoming a popularity contest. To further safeguard the uprightness of the awards, there is no money-for-awards transactions.

The Judging panel

Our sincere thanks goes to our three judges who have given their time to
select gold, silver and bronze winners in each of four categories.

Yulia Yarkova

Art journalist Yulia Yarkova, better known online as Galleries Gal, runs a highly successful Instagram account and website www.galleriesgal.com dedicated to Hong Kong’s art scene. She often shares bite-sized notes on what’s happening in the city, while running from press preview to exhibition opening and back again. With a background in interior design and art history, Yulia is deeply rooted in the local art scene and passionately promotes Hong Kong artists to make them more visible in both the local and international markets. Yarkova says that the Hong Kong art scene is very diverse — and sometimes overwhelmingly so — so when she couldn’t find a place to see all the ongoing or upcoming events and exhibitions, she created one. Yarkova’s core value proposition is that she visits almost every single exhibition in Hong Kong, so that you don’t have to.

Jason Dembski

A pivotal figure on the Hong Kong art scene, Jason Dembski is the co-founder and director of HKWALLS and founder of Current Projects. Under the former, non-profit organisation launched in 2014, Dembski and his wife Maria celebrate creativity, originality and freedom of expression, actively building relationships with artists, the community and organisations worldwide, whilst making the creative process accessible to all. The eponymous street art festival takes place every March during Hong Kong Arts Month and features 30-40 artists painting in the streets of Hong Kong. The festivals’ supplemental events and HKWALLS year-round programming focuses on community engagement, artists’ career development and raising awareness through the arts. Dembski’s Current Projects offers curation, creation, direction, design, build and more.

Read more about Jason and his wife Maria’s work here.

Peter Sung

Peter Sung, a veteran photographer with over 50 years of experience in the trade, has participated in numerous international photography competitions. Some of his most recent work can be found in the Hong Kong Central Library, while two of his photographs are displayed in the headquarters of the Government Flying Service; yet others are featured across the border, in Shenzhen. Two of Sung’s photos were awarded positions in National Geographic’s Top 5 and Top 50 lists of photographs in 2024 and Sung picked up Being Neighbourly’s Creativity Award 2024 for his photos highlighting the wealth gap in Hong Kong. Peter travels widely across China and beyond for his work with the Hong Kong China Tourism Press, for whom he is a contracted photographer.