The London Book Fair is a global marketplace to negotiate about rights as well as sell and distribute content for channels such as print, audio, TV, film and digital. It takes place every spring in one of the world capitals of culture and publishing. "The Arts Bridge", a going-global platform of Guangxi Normal University Press will starts her journey of cultural and international communications of the year from London. Being her second appearance on London Book Fair, "The Arts Bridge" is more vivid and having more content. This time, we've invited five outstanding artists and designers, Bai Ming, Yung Ho Chang, Li Xiangning, Shen Yu and Zhu Yingchun, to show their splendid works and cutting-edge ideas to the world through a new model of publishing + exhibitions + international conferences.

As a platform displaying art and design books and promoting artists and designers, Guangxi Normal University Press has always worked hard on the design of the stand. In 2018, a pure white stand specially made for Chinese visual artist Zhu Yingchun performed its first appearance on both London Book Fair and Frankfurt Book Fair. Since then, the simple and pure design style and the blue bridge logo are going deep into people's heart. In 2019, we invited Yung Ho Chang, a famous Chinese architects and the winner of "Designer of the Year", designed the eye-catching poster for "The Arts Bridge".

At the stand of "The Arts Bridge", visitors are reading the newly released English version of BAI, a book of the winner of "Artist of the Year 2019" and celebrated Chinese ceramist Bai Ming. Pushing Chinese arts and designs going global is the cultural mandate of a publisher and Guangxi Normal University Press has been fulfilling her mission and responsibility through all the years. Meanwhile, as a like-minded friend of excellent Chinese artists and designers, Guangxi is also endowing new impetus to the tradition.

The development of "The Arts Bridge" has never stopped. On 2018 Frankfurt Book Fair, we applied VR technology into the exhibition for the first time and converted the content in Made in Shanghai into a virtual museum. And on 2019 London Book Fair, we released virtual museum ver. 2.0. Visitors could not only feel the charm of Shanghai designs through new technology, but also see the elegant trim of an old Shanghai car and sound its horn.

Guangxi Normal University Press has opened a window to the world through "The Arts Bridge". "Publishing is our root, but not our destination", said Mr Liu Guanghan, deputy editor-in-chief of Guangxi Normal University Press and the leader of "The Arts Bridge" program.

Listening to the Voice of China

"The Arts Bridge" 2019 International Conference was held in London Design Museum for the first time. The conference saw five winner of this year's "Annual Series" and international guests discussing about designs and arts.

During the conference, Bai Ming, the winner of "The Artists of the Year 2019" narrated his profound understanding of ceramic arts and showed his practices about the innovation and development of the traditional Chinese art with pictures.

Shen Yu, author of Made in Shanghai and research scholar of Chinese design history, addressed a speech on the conference and introduced the China Industrial Design Museum he established 8 years ago. The development of Shanghai design over the past 100 years was described vividly by his pictures. The speech was followed by a discussion between Shen Yu and Sarah Teasle, professor of Royal College of Art, on topic of design history research.

Zhu Yingchun is the first artist joined "The Arts Bridge". Since 2017, he has earned a large amount of fans during the book fairs arrange by "The Arts Bridge". At the conference, he shared his inspiration acquired in the nature. Uniped, a cacaform bird, was also brought to the meeting and represented the creativity and imagination of the great artist.

During the second half of the conference, Yung Ho Chang, winner of "The Designer of the Year 2019", Deyan Sudjic, Curator of London Design Museum and Li Xiangning, professor of College of Architecture and Urban Planning Tongji University, gave brilliant speeches separately. And a discussion about architecture and design was conducted by them.

"The Arts Bridge" is a platform where Chinese and Western culture interweave together. Here, we get to know each other through an old way of publishing and books and communicate through a new way of art and design. Guangxi Normal University is looking forward to attract more Chinese and Western artists and designers to join together to share with each other and achieve a win-win situation.