Hong Kong has publicly declared its intention, via its cultural policy, of becoming an international cultural metropolis. This has been matched, on the part of its educational reforms, by a commitment aimed at ensuring that students are fully prepared to meet the multifarious work and life challenges of the future. Forming a potential bridge between the two sectors is arts education, formally recognised as fostering the necessary skills of appreciation, creativity and expression and of enriching the cultural literacy of individuals and society, thereby providing the soil, nutrition and impetus for cultural development. This study adopted the analogy of cultural policy and arts education policy as the two wings of the same bird which, when working in unison, have the power to yield rewards at both a sectoral and at a stakeholder level through the occurrence of mutually-beneficial synergies, in order to investigate the degree to which this was presently taking place. Via an ecological research perspective characterised by a focus on the layers of interconnectedness and interrelatedness among the various stakeholders within and across Hong Kong’s cultural and arts education sectors, the methodology drew on the salient features of both the “ecological worldview” and the “interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary” types to more fully understand perceptions as they related to the policies’ fundamental elements of “conceptualisation”, “communication” and “operationalisation”. As a means of answering the three research questions guiding the study, the data gathering and analysis stage was concerned with the collection of the relevant policy documentation, an online cultural and arts education policy questionnaire, and a series of semi-structured, in-depth interviews. The findings revealed that while evidence exists of a variety of intra- and inter-sectoral partnerships, this is not being matched by a strategic vision at a policymaking level that clearly demonstrates how such collaborations

Confronted with the rise of a new group within its organization, Small World, an international Christian kindergarten in Hong Kong, is being forced to reconsider its boundaries. The trend towards more applications to international schools by Hong Kong Chinese, adds an extra dimension to the already extensive cultural diversity among the kindergarten's staff, students and their parents. Describing the appreciation for cultural diversity amongst staff and parents, the strategies that are used to maintain harmony and the motives that (Hong Kong Chinese) parents have for participation in the school, it is argued that only one effect of globalization on the macro level can be identified on the micro and meso level, namely indigenization. The article shows how parents, staff and the organization all try to adopt attractive or useful elements of foreign cultures without giving up their own culture, and subsequently foster multiculturalism in an attempt to reach their goals, these being the cultural competence of their children for Hong Kong Chinese parents and success for the organization. The resulting demand for the incorporation of extra foreign elements in the curriculum is forcing Small World to reconsider its boundaries.
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