Examiners

Since 1999, the examiner system was established to engage arts professionals and veterans to take part in the grant application assessment.  The examiner system is to strengthen the spirit of peer assessment so as to ensure that the process of grant assessment is conducted to minimise potential conflicts of interest. Open recruitment and invitation to join the panel of examiners is carried out on a regular basis. 

In line with the implementation of the examiner system, Declaration of Conflict of Interest is introduced. Examiners are required to declare all interests and abide to the “Prevention of Bribery Ordinance” and “Code of Conduct” set out by the HKADC for the process of grant assessment and the writing of evaluation reports to remain firmly independent and to be free of all potential conflicts. Particular importance is given to the protection of intellectual property rights and the safeguards of confidentiality during the assessment process.

Prevention on Conflict of Interest

The assessment system is formulated based on principles of peer assessment. We regularly invite and recruit professionals from relevant artforms to be examiners through nominations and open invitations in newspapers. These examiners will assess grant applications and make funding recommendations for the Council’s consideration.

To prevent conflict of interest, we will only assign examiners who do not have any conflicts with the application being assessed, as well as those applications being assessed in the same group. We have also put in place relevant mechanisms and procedures, such as declaration of personal interests, assigning qualified examiners from the pool of examiners to assess each application through an objective random process so as to minimise any potential conflict of interest.

Arts Specialties

Examiners are grouped under their respective artforms and we will arrange assessment according to the most relevant artforms (see the table below). Within each artform, we will enlist examiners with professional knowledge in different genres and fields to cater for the wide variety of applications received. There are examiners with expertise in arts administration, arts criticism, arts education and other various arts specialties within each artform. For instance, the music artform includes experts of Chinese music, western music, vocal/choral music. For the dance artform, experts of ballet, Chinese dance, modern dance, folk dance are included. While for visual arts, examiners include those with expertise in Chinese painting and calligraphy, seal-engraving, western arts–2D (oil painting/ print-making/ comics/ water colour painting/ sketching), design, 3D (ceramics/ sculpture/ glass), photography, mixed materials/ installation, architecture, etc.

If there are applications other than the artforms or categories listed below, we will try our best to invite suitable experts of relevant professional background to assist in the adjudication of the applications.

The following are examiners whose term of office is from July 1, 2023 to June 30, 2026 (List updated on 11/2/2025) :