Third Culture - where transient millennials can explore their roots
Idea is to help people who grew up outside their homeland find cultural identity
How do you define "home"? Is it a sense of domestic stability? Is it the place where you grew up, or the place where you live now? These are the questions new platform and company Third Culture - which encompasses film, writing, festivals and a broader focus of cultural engagement - seeks to explore in a variety of mediums.
Third Culture's name refers to a unique demographic: those people who have grown up outside their parents' culture, whose childhoods involve jumping from city to city, and soaking up different social environments. Because of globalisation and the transient geographical nature of most millennials' careers, it's a growing phenomenon: third-culture children are part and parcel of Hong Kong's cultural fabric.
In December Harry Oram (Filipino-Maori, born in Hong Kong, studied in Edinburgh, Scotland, lived in New Zealand, and now back in Hong Kong) co-founded Third Culture with Aaron Stadlin-Robbie to fill the gap in third-culture expression. The website, which will feature most of their content, is due to be launched by the end of this month. A few months into their soft launch Third Culture is getting positive feedback and interest from people eager to be on board.
"People who are born into a third culture, who might not feel comfortable in their own environment, gravitate naturally to something more than a job or geographical location - something cultural," Oram says. "I want to create a platform to express that, but not define it."
The platform (for now just a Facebook page, but other social media outlets are in development) consists of videos produced and starring people under the Third Culture umbrella, whether it be filmmakers, actors, writers or athletes. (Hong Kong pro basketball player Duncan Reid featured in their first video.) Oram says they're about to roll out a video series, , which explores interracial marriages and parenting.
Although Oram originally imagined a video platform only, he says that he and his team - which now numbers more than 20 people - are planning an online magazine in which native and nomadic philosophy can be explored. Writers are given free rein over content, in keeping with the amorphous nature of third-culture identity.
