SCHEME A: Scheme for Winners of Specified International Competitions/Awards

The 4th edition of Sponsorship for International Design Awards (4th SIDA) is a sponsorship programme with an aim to provide financial aid to encourage Hong Kong designers and local design-applying enterprises to participate in the representative international competitions and awards in order to increase the publicity of Hong Kong design.

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The reimbursement is served as a reward to the good work, and as an honour and recognition from Create Hong Kong by providing financial reimbursement to Hong Kong designers and local design-applying enterprises who "won the specified international competitions/awards".

The financial aid is based on a list of 46 specified international competitions/awards with 7 design categories (Multi, Graphics, Spatial, Product, Fashion, Digital Media and Design Education). All awards are endorsed by 20 local professional design associations and institutions and design celebrities.

(i) Application & Eligible Claim Period

• Application Period from 12/3/2025 to 11/3/2026.
• All specified awards are eligible for application throughout the eligible claim period, commencing from 1/7/2023 to 11/3/2026.
• Award fees will be reimbursed from 12/3/2025 to 11/3/2026, and the reimbursement claim for award fees for specified awards will be granted once award announcement is released during the eligible period.
• There will be no retrospective approval for reimbursement claims in respect of awards obtained before the eligible claim period (i.e. 1/7/2023).
• Application will be processed on a First-Come-First-Served Basis, based on the submission date of the application form. If key information is missing from the application, such as flight ticket details, applicants will be given a one-month period to provide the missing information.
• Reimbursement will continue until the allocated fund has been fully utilized.

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(ii) Eligibility

• All specified awards (please refer to Annex: 46 International Competitions/Awards list) are eligible for application throughout the call for eligible period, from 1/7/2023 to 11/3/2026.
• Individual applicants must be permanent residents of Hong Kong and the holders of Hong Kong 3-star ID cards. 
• Design companies or design-applying enterprises, must be locally registered and have Hong Kong Business Registration (BR) and Certificate of Incorporation (CI).
• There is no age limited and eligibility is not limited to design practitioners. (If the public or design students have the capacity and talents to gain the specific awards, they are warmly welcome to apply too.)

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(iii) Selection Mechanism

The scheme is on a “First-Come, First-Served” basis and the applicants who receive the support from the scheme shall undertake to share their works at the SIDA exhibition and sharing seminars.  No application fee will be charged for applying the 4th SIDA. However, awardees of unlisted competitions/awards in this program will not be considered.

The applicants are required to provide the project name, project description, information of the designer/designers or design companies including names, addresses, telephone numbers, a copy of BR of the companies, ID numbers of the designers and contact persons.

Funding support is given in the form of a lump sum grant. A total sum of the award participation fee of each listed award will be reimbursed once the applicant is awarded to the required award level or category. Each reimbursement will be based on its application and award fee spent.  For example, to reimburse the travel and accommodation fee, an awardee or awardee's representative must attend the award ceremony to receive the award; if no representative showcases in the award ceremony, no reimbursement can be applied.  The meaning of “award fee” refers to the compulsory fee of which the awardee must pay to receive the award, such as the winners’ promotion fee, the interview fee, the printing fee and so on, as required by the award organiser with official receipts.

The application is required to submit both invoices and receipts for reimbursement claim and they must be issued in the name of the applicant (for representative's flight and accommodation, the payer must be under the name of the applicant and the representative will be the guest name). To avoid the double subsidy or duplicated financial support, the applicants need to register and sign a guarantee form that they have not received any other funding sources while applying the same specified international award in the same year using the same design.

(iv) Reimbursable items (subject to the terms herein)

1)   Entry fee

2)   Taxation

3)   Courier fee

4)   Winners package / Publication fee

5)   Exhibition fee

6)   Flight and accommodation for the collection of the award. (This only applies when the organizer has sent an official invitation to the winner. Only ONE representative will be sponsored to collect the award. One air return ticket in economy class to the location of the award ceremony and two nights' hotel accommodation not exceeding HK$2,000 per night for this representative.)

Entry fee, Taxation, Courier Fee, Publication Fee and Exhibition Fee vary in different international competitions/awards. The maximum reimbursement of each award is HK$100,000 while the maximum reimbursement for a design unit (designer or design company) in the Scheme A+B is capped at HK$ 200,000.

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For illustration purposes, a designer/design unit cannot reimburse more than HK$200,000 even if the designer wins more than one specified international awards within the eligible period. SIDA does not restrict the number of awards.

For examples:

1) Designer A won 2 awards and has already paid HK$120,000 for each award. He can only reimburse HK$100,000 for every single award, so the reimbursement amount will be HK$100,000 + HK$100,000 = HK$200,000.

2) Designer B won 3 awards and paid  HK$120,000 for the first award, HK$50,000 for the remaining two awards. He can reimburse HK$100,000 for the first award and HK$50,000 for the remaining two, the total reimbursement amount will be HK$100,000 + HK$50,000 + HK$50,000 = HK$200,000.

3) Designer C won 8 awards and paid HK$20,000 for each award, he can reimburse all the awards, the total reimbursement will be HK$20,000 x 8 awards = HK$160,000.

4) Designer D used the DFA awards winning work to enter two international awards and paid HK$10,000 entry fee, meanwhile won 2 other international awards and paid HK$20,000 for each award, the total reimbursement amount will be HK$10,000 (under Scheme B) + HK$20,000 x 2 awards (under Scheme A) = HK$50,000.

Thus, SIDA does not restrict the number of awards, but restricts the maximum reimbursement amount of Each Award and the maximum reimbursement amount of Each Design Unit under the First-Come-First Served Basis.

(v) The Claim for Past SIDA Participants

All past participants of the SIDA project will be eligible to apply for sponsorship again. However, applicants who have received sponsorship in both the 2nd SIDA (2020) and 3rd SIDA (2021/22) editions will have their sponsorship/funding level reduced from 100% to 50% of the claim amount under this 4th SIDA edition if they submit the same product/design work for sponsorship for a third time. 

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This approach was first suggested in the proposal for the previous SIDA project (3rd SIDA 2021/22), and we have revisited this suggestion to implement it this year in order to encourage project participants to create new products and designs that support their sustainable growth. By reducing the sponsorship for repeat participants, we create more opportunities and incentives for new applicants to get involved in the SIDA project. Moreover, this helps diversify the types of projects being supported and encourages participants to continue innovating.

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Applicants have to declare information when submitting their applications. If the information is cross-checked and found to be wrong, applicants have to pay back the full claim amount or sponsorship money that they had received from the SIDA project.

(vi) Reimbursement and Release of Grant

Reimbursement will be processed within 3 months after the application is considered successful. Since the project is government-funded under CreateSmart Initiative (“CSI”)  governance, an applicant understands that this project is operating under the supervision of HKSAR Government, and agrees the reimbursement schedule will be followed by the actual payment schedule of CSI funding issued by the HKSAR Government. A successful applicant will receive 70% of the reimbursement in the preliminary round of examination. The last phase of payment will be settled within 6 - 9 months once the project funds from CSI are received.

(vii) Miscellaneous

In case of any discrepancy or inconsistency between the English and Chinese version of the guidance notes and the English version shall prevail.