The Connections Through Culture (CTC) grants programme nurtures fresh cultural partnerships between the UK and select countries in Asia Pacific and Europe. These grants support new ideas and collaborations from artists and cultural organisations at any stage of development.  

The latest round of Connections Through Culture programme supports a diverse range of projects spanning artistic disciplines and themes. From diversity and inclusion to climate change and beyond, these collaborations bring together partners across borders to generate fresh ideas and creative solutions to today’s shared challenges. 

CTC support new connections, exchanges, and collaborations between artists, cultural professionals, creative practitioners and art and cultural organisations.

2025 Grant Recipients: China

10,000 Elephants

China: YAN Jun 
UK: AC Projects / Alternative Currents 

Counterflows (Glasgow) and You and Me (Beijing) festivals join forces to explore community building through DIY music scenes. The project features a two-way exchange of artists and producers, alongside an online network linking both festivals. Guided by Beijing-based artist Yan Jun, it fosters dialogue, knowledge-sharing, and collaboration across borders. This project is supported by the Scottish Government Office in China.

Beijing to Belfast

China: Beijing Modern Music Festival 
UK: Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble 

Following their collaboration in 2025, this project extends connections through new works composed for Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble by two Chinese composers. The pieces will be presented in a specially curated Chinese music concert in Northern Ireland in 2026, featuring composers from China. The performance will take place at the Queen’s University Belfast, highlighting cross-cultural exchange and contemporary Chinese composition.

Coastal Co-Art: UK-China Mirror Residencies

China: PAN Shanghai 

UK: Dr Serena POLLASTRI, Lancaster School of Architecture, Lancaster University 

This mirrored residency connects Lancaster and Shanghai through art and ecology. After shared ecological design training, artists will experiment with diverse creative responses to coastal wetlands, culminating in public showcases and exhibitions. The project reimagines sustainability across cultures, with water as the ultimate connector. 

esea contemporary × Lu Yan Collaboration: Yeren (A Punk Musical)

China: LU Yan 

UK: esea contemporary  

This project brings together esea contemporary (UK) and composer Lu Yan (China) to create new music for Yeren, an artist film by Chris Zhongtian Yuan. Blending punk, experimental sound, and queer storytelling, the work explores myth, ecology, and cultural resistance. 

Flight Paths: Homing Syndrome

China: Tabula Rasa Gallery 

UK: Daisy WANG  

Cultural Translation of Racing Pigeons is a cross-cultural collaboration by curator Daisy Di Wang and artist Cosmo Wong, with Tabula Rasa Gallery (Beijing), Site Gallery (Sheffield), and BeingSync (UK). It traces pigeon racing from British working-class roots to Chinese adaptations, exploring migration, belonging, and non-human agency. 

Panda's Big Journey

China: Little Player Theater 
UK: Stuff and Nonsense Theatre Company 
 
Panda’s Big Journey is an ambitious R&D collaboration designed to explore how children experience and interpret cultural differences. Using the imaginative framework of a Giant Panda, an endangered species sent abroad as a diplomatic gift, the project will research early ideas for a new theatre production informed directly by children's voices in China and the UK.

She and the Tea Mountain: Digital Archives of Women's Labor, Land and Life in Jingmai

China: AN Jing 

UK: Shuran Zhao 

She and the Tea Mountain is a transnational documentary and digital humanities project led by digital China researcher Shuran Zhao and the China partner An Jing (Artist, Curator & Cross-cultural Researcher in Contemporary Art and Digital Humanities). It amplifies the voices, labour and ecological wisdom of Blang women in Jingmai, Yunnan, UNESCO’s first tea culture heritage site.

Silent Language

China: Xinru DAI，Yusi WANG, Yuxiao ZHU
UK: Maria Hanson 

Silent Language is a contemporary (art) jewellery project exploring ‘womanhood’ through making. Recognising that women still face complex challenges within work, society, and the home, this project will use craft-making to connect, discuss, document, and present what it means to be or not to be a woman today. 

The Soft Archive: Performing Women’s Unseen Labour in Independent Chinese Cinema

China: Jenny Man WU 

UK: Chinese Independent Film Archive (CIFA), Newcastle University  

This project builds a performative archive to honour women’s hidden contributions to China’s independent film scene. Drawing on oral histories and archives, it amplifies the uncredited labour of partners, curators, and volunteers. Through post-verbatim theatre co-created with UK artists, these stories return as embodied memories, bringing overlooked voices into public space and challenging dominant narratives.