Lamma Fun Day (LFD) has been a fixture of Hong Kong’s live music calendar for as long as many can remember. Originally founded in 2000 as a creative fundraising concept to benefit Nepal’s Child Welfare Scheme (CWS), it has since grown to be the city’s longest-running single-day music event, talked about everywhere from Shek O to Sha Tin. When you quiz emerging local musicians about the stages they’d dream of playing on, LFD’s beach stage often comes up.
However, ask the hordes of people attending the free and fabulous event on Tai Wan To Beach (Power Station Beach) what it’s all about, most will not have a clue. For its existence we can thank Douglas Maclagan.
Making a difference
Maclagan’s background in education, trauma, and youth counselling served as useful tools to uplift the early childhood education services in Nepal. Working with a retired Gurkha soldier running a school, Maclagan travelled through the country’s remote areas doing field research, and came across a shocking fact: a rural child mortality rate of 34%. Common causes of childhood death were snakebites, and falling off paddyfield walls when accompanying caregivers to the fields.
As someone who’d enjoyed a pampered early life in London’s Swiss Cottage, Maclagan felt a duty to help. In 1995, a year after moving to Nepal, he sold the house he’d inherited from his grandfather to set up Child Welfare Scheme, while also building daycare health centres in the villages of Saimarang and Warchok. Functioning as crèches with attached primary healthcare units, the goal of these centres was not only to educate children, but also to lower the maternal mortality rate, which at that time was the third highest in the world. With the government’s support, Maclagan and his team set up several more centres across the country, ultimately succeeding in lowering the rural child mortality rate to 6%.
When Maclagan’s old friend, Lamma resident Andrew Doig, came to visit him in Nepal in February 2000, it sparked an idea: “You know what, Douglas, this is just unbelievable. Why don’t we drum up the community in Lamma, get a group of volunteers together, and create a fun day?” he remembers Doig saying. “You help me organise it and all the proceeds will go to the Child Welfare Scheme.” An institution was born.
Birth of the Fun Days
Staged in 2000, the first Fun Day started with volleyball and a few games on the beach. “The games were a very important part of the day at that time, because it was about children in Hong Kong having fun to raise money for children in Nepal to live better lives,” adds Maclagan. On the sidelines were a handful of busking bands, followed by The Yung Shue Wan Curs – the humorous country and folk band still going strong to this day.
The Curs were the first real band to play at LFD, but things grew quickly. Sonya Yeung, chief event co-ordinator from 2004 until 2023, recalls: “The beach stage went from a dozen bands on a patch of sand, to one borrowed stage from a school, to four stages today.”
Although the bands added plenty of excitement to the day’s festivities, fundraising was always the main purpose – whether selling homemade food or donating bric-a-brac. “It was small, but everyone was generous in supporting CWS’s projects,” Yeung remembers.
Bring out the bands
LFD’s evolution into an unrivalled beach festival – with close to 50 bands playing across four stages – is in large part thanks to Dave Wilkinson, who went from running bar quizzes at the long-shuttered Island Bar to LFD’s lead organiser and music coordinator – or as Maclagan calls him, a “magician with bands”.
With this rapid growth, the audience has exploded: thousands of festival-goers are estimated to have turned out last year, travelling from all over Hong Kong. But the charitable goal has always remained in sight.
“The original LFD was more of a local Lamma affair, and the team at the time thought if we brought in bands from the city, we could expand the event and raise more money for CWS,” says Wilkinson. “It has since grown into a city-wide festival that supports the whole music scene.” >
Bigger, better, louder
Alongside the festival’s four stages – the Beach Stage (these days much more elaborate than a “patch of sand”!), Restaurant 80 Stage, Road Stage, and Star Stage – an exciting new addition to this year’s schedule is a silent disco.
On the fundraising front, Maclagan and Wilkinson are also refocusing the casual audience on the event’s ultimate goal. “To show support for the charity, this year we are asking adults to make a voluntary donation of HK$100 in exchange for a friendship bracelet from Nepal,” says Wilkinson. “Think of it as a cheap entrance ticket to be worn with pride.”
So, where does your cash go? All proceeds from LFD go directly towards CWS’s critical youth projects, education, and anti-trafficking initiatives in Nepal. This year, the charity is giving special focus to the rehabilitation and reintegration of women lured into the adult entertainment sector or the sex trade, who can’t be legally rescued because they’re above 18.
“This is about giving people a second chance and a second opportunity in life,” says Maclagan. “It’s not rocket science. Everybody deserves that. And that’s what the Lamma crew are supporting.” This year, as well as funding vital connection centres that offer advice and support for women in need, the charity will also be directing financial aid to survivors of Nepal’s recent catastrophic flooding disaster.
You may wonder, then, what the secret ingredient is that keeps the fun going – inspiring a community of volunteers to put in the legwork to host a huge beach festival, year in and year out, for over a quarter of a century. Wilkinson has one answer: “The greatest reward for all involved is seeing a beach packed with people having loads of fun whilst raising as much money as possible for such a worthy charity.”