FuturED#2 speakers Poet Blair Reeve and Artistic Director of Micro Galleries Kat Roma Greer.

This week two FuturED#2 speakers are featured Poet Blair Reeve and Artistic Director of Micro Galleries Kat Roma Greer.

Artistic Director of Micro Galleries Kat Roma Greer.

Kat Roma Greer (left) Blair Reeve

Kat Roma Greer is from New South Wales Australia, post high school she completed an arts correspondence course which; ‘opened up a world of beauty and joy’ she had never seen before. She has moved through the art world in various guises from performer to art director, but throughout she has strived to bring art to the people.

“Growing up, there was few places anyone could go to and enjoy art, the art world seen closed off like we were the wrong type of people to be creating art or even entering a gallery. When I moved to Hong Kong I had the same type of feeling, arts was locked away in a few Hollywood Road galleries or it was at trade fairs. It felt like art was for commerce. Where was public art for the people?

“Everyone has the right to enjoy art and Micro Galleries’ mission is to reclaim public spaces, develop local artists and bring art to the people!”

Roma Greer’s projects take her all over the world, she told the FuturED#2 audience about her recent trip to Bali where street boy Robbie followed the Micro Galleries team first asking for money but day by day becoming part of the team. “Robbie wouldn’t leave us alone and after a while he started joining in with what we were doing; mixing glue, putting up pictures and carrying equipment. When the gallery was finished and we started giving tours to visitors, he quickly realised what we were doing and he did the same with the other street children.” She explained that children like Robbie and the other successes she has had with Micro Galleries are the reason she keeps going.

“You are a generation that doesn’t need to ask permission! You can do anything if you give it a go.”

Roma Greer finished by saying she has an opportunity for one of the students; “But I am not going to tell you what it is. I have got an idea of what it might be but I think you will have much better ideas, so pitch me an idea and let’s see if it can happen!”

Poet Blair Reeve

Blair Reeve is a New Zealander living in Hong Kong. He is a performance poet and has travelled widely performing his poetry since the mid-90s. He told the FuturED#2 audience about his interest in the destruction and contradiction of language, and when studied – language doesn’t always make sense. He performed rhythmic, experimental and comical pomes on the topic and the idea that the powers of the day influence newspapers.

Reeve has written and self-published a children’s book, Hogart the Hedgehog Turns Nink. “With Hogart I intuited that this was something good, something I was proud of based on how much effort I put into writing it, and after being rejected by literary agents about 15 times, I just thought, You know what? I love this piece of work. I’m gonna publish it myself and see how it fares. Rejection because your work doesn’t fit the confines of a perceived commercial market is different from rejection because your work’s not up to scratch. Even if it does fail, whatever that could mean, I’ll do it again because I enjoyed writing Hogart more than anything I’ve ever written”

“Rhythm and meter and form—it’s a really good way to wrestle thought into language, and as long as you can look back at your work and know it was the best you could do at the time, then you’ll always be proud of it.”