Academy for Performing Arts chief Kevin Thompson speaks on leaving his post
Despite a series of controversies, Kevin Thompson is leaving the city's Academy for Performing Arts with the institution 'maturing' and growing in stature
Perhaps it's an inherent talent for a classical musician, but Kevin Thompson has always shown a flair for doing the right thing in front of a camera.
And in eight often difficult years as head of the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, he has had to become good at showing the institution's best side, as well as his own.
As his tenure comes to an end, Thompson says "it felt like eight weeks", but he is proud of achieving what he set out to do in 2004.
Those goals were building the institution's international links - it now has ties with The Juilliard School in New York and colleges on the mainland - and introducing master's degrees in performing arts disciplines.
And one of his final contributions was to put forward expansion plans for the academy's Wan Chai campus, including the construction of a new nine-storey building, and complete a strategic review, which encouraged the academy to focus its resources on disciplines it is strong in, including music and technical arts.
"Maturing the institution is not a job that can be done overnight," Thompson says. "It's time for the academy to expand. [The review] is an incremental part of the maturing of the academy," he says.