‘Remember the time we sing’: A caring inquiry

In 1988, I started writing lyrics for popular music in Hong Kong. In 2018, Vicky Fung, a veteran music practitioner, and I set up a social enterprise, ‘Every Life Is a Song’, with the idea that every person deserves a song created entirely as inspired by that person’s life. Our recent project – ‘Remember the Time We Sing’ – deals with people living with dementia. Eight songs were created. In September 2023, a series of concerts were staged, and a 20-minute documentary was screened. Taking this project as an instance, this essay is a response to Ana Alacovska’s (2020) appeal to conduct a caring inquiry of creative work, to examine ‘the undervalued and under-researched dynamics of care, caring and compassion in creative works’ (p. 727). While Alacovka’s inquiry draws from artists’ subjective accounts, I conduct mine more eclectically, and autoethnographically. Guided by my own involvement, I include participants’ experiences, project design and implementation, as well as the local context into the inquiry. Three dimensions will be elaborated, on care, on creativity and on the city of Hong Kong, discussing, respectively, relationality and interdependence, re-evaluation of creative work, and hope for a better world. The discussion surrounding Hong Kong is also meant to deliver local, specific experience to enrich thinking on care, and to posit a post-critical approach to creative work. This is part of a Special Issue: Re-creating Care as Mattering Practices.