On June 29, 2016, the “Sino-UK Performing Arts Skills Exchange Symposium”, which was hosted by the British Embassy Cultural and Education Office, Peking University School of Art, and also the NCRICA, supported by the Ministry of Culture and the British Royal Opera House, came to a successful ending.

During the three-day events, over one hundred experts, from UK and China, attended the meeting. Based on the experience of the communication and cooperation between the two countries, representatives carried out deep dialogues, on common problems in the field of performing arts, including the groups and the operation mode of the theatre, the operation mechanism of actual performances, the expansion of audience, the overseas spreading model, stage management standards and international cooperation mechanism, the avoidance of cultural conflict, the composition of funding sources, the cooperation between theatre and sponsors, the sustainable professional development, the selection mechanism of top managers and so on.

Around these problems, Alex Sens from the British National Theatre, also the director of War Horse, and Wang Xiaoying, the executive vice President of National Theatre Company of China, also served as the director of Richard iii, analyzed their own work respectively. Then, the head of drama production department Ms. Wei Lanfen from National Theatre and the British National Theater technical director Jonathan Suffolk compared the process of the plays’ structure and production between Chinese and British teams. After that, some other experts shares their ideas in performance production and play tour, including the chief executive officer of Shakespeare's globe Theatre, Neil Constable, and the Royal Opera House executive director Michael Sims, musical producer Tian Yuan, and also director Alison Friedman from Ping-Pong planning team. Through the lectures, question answering and group discussions, participants exchanged information, found out problems, sum up experience, and finally reached an understanding. Both British and Chinese representatives agreed that the communication achieved the desired result.

At the end of the three-day seminars, Professor Lin Yi, the executive director of NCRICA, summarized the whole event. She said: “All the topics of the meeting were proposed elaborately by both British and Chinese experts. It’s glad to see that our focuses were not limited to these issues, instead, we reached a much more comprehensive discussion. The meeting was an efficient, pragmatic dialogue between the performing arts in UK and China, marking a new era of cooperation."

In the afternoon, the closing ceremony was held in Peking University. Prof. Lin Yi hosted the ceremony. The vice dean of the School of Art, Professor Peng Feng, presented the closing speech. “The form of our communication is refreshing,” he said, “the depth and extent of dialogues called for deep thought. There was not only practical significance, but also much more great academic significance.”