Big-picture plan for arts academy
The HKAPA will open two new colleges and an opera school as it tries to position itself in the performing arts scene at home and abroad
The city's only performing arts academy will create two colleges in a restructuring plan designed to steer it to international success, according to a new strategic blueprint.
The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts (HKAPA) will also open a Chinese opera school and hire two new deputy directors, according to its "Strategic Planning Framework", seen by the South China Morning Post.
It comes ahead of the academy's 30th anniversary next year, and is the first such plan since it was set up in 1984, says director Adrian Walter, who joined the HKAPA in September. "People are anxious if we might be losing the sense of what we really are. How are we going to compete in the globalised market? We have to position ourselves looking internationally and engaging the mainland," he said.
The plan is a 10-year roadmap, Walter said, and goes beyond a recent review conducted by accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers which recommended the HKAPA focus its resources on the schools of music, theatre and entertainment arts.
Walter said the academy wants to strengthen the quality of its training as well as its role in local, regional and international performing arts. And the new structure will allow it to develop a succession plan, he added.
Two new deputy directors - one responsible for administration and the other for academic programmes and educational innovation - will be brought in to oversee the academy's broader development.
The academy's current five schools will be divided between the two new colleges.