An educational futurist and passionate arts educator, Professor Anne Bamford OBE, FCGI is Director of the International Research Agency, President of the Education Inspiring Peace Laboratory and Adjunct Professor at the University of Sydney. She was the former Strategic Education, Skills and Culture Director for the City of London. Anne has been recognised nationally and internationally for her research in the arts education, culture and fusion skills. She is an expert in the international dimension of education and skills and talent development and through her research, she has pursued issues of creativity, technology, innovation, social impact and inclusion.

Professor Anna CY Chan 

Professor Anna CY Chan is the Director of The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts (HKAPA) and an internationally recognised visionary leader with 35 years of distinguished service in advancing performing arts education. With an unparalleled combination of artistic excellence, extensive management experience, and a vast industry network, she has made transformative and groundbreaking contributions across academia, arts administration, performance, production, and international collaboration. Currently, she is a member of the Performing Arts Committee of the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority, Director of the Tai Kwun Board, and Chair of its Culture and Arts Programme Committee. She serves as the Dance Advisor for the Hong Kong Arts Development Council and President of World Dance Alliance.

Her academic leadership is marked by major institutional transformation and strategic development. She has led the restructuring of HKAPA’s organisational framework, driven long-term strategic planning and development, and advanced new campus development initiatives to support future growth. She has also played a key role in strengthening academic governance, quality assurance, and HKAPA’s self-accreditation, reinforcing its standing as a leading arts institution in Asia. Committed to sustainability, she has championed SDG-aligned initiatives, including the development of green theatres and environmentally responsible performing arts facilities at HKAPA. Her scholarship is published by prestigious presses such as Routledge, and she is a sought-after keynote speaker at international conferences.

Recognised for her dual expertise as a scholar and practitioner, Professor Chan holds professorial and visiting professorial appointments at leading institutions, including Professor at HKAPA, Visiting Professor at the Central Academy of Drama (Beijing), Yunnan Arts University, Beijing Dance Academy, and Appointed Expert for Cultural Exchange at The National Academy of Chinese Theatre Arts. She was Inaugural Head of Dance at the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority and co-founded the Asia Network for Dance (AND+) with 14 global partners, advancing sustained international collaboration. Her leadership has been recognised with major honours, including the Hong Kong Dance Award, Hong Kong Arts Development Award, City Contemporary Dance Laureate, Distinguished Achievement Award, and AmCham Leading Woman in Arts, Sports & Leisure.

Trained professionally in Hong Kong, Australia, and the United Kingdom, she holds a Professional Dancer Diploma from the Royal Ballet School, an MA in Dance Studies (University of Surrey), and an M.Ed (The University of Sheffield), with advanced leadership training from The University of Hong Kong/Clore and Oxford Saïd Business School.

Currently working as the Director of Art in Hospital and Community Art Network, vice-chairperson of Arts with the Disabled Association Hong Kong, Grace Cheng is also the guest curator of Hong Kong Palace Museum. She believes art could bring infinite possibilities, therefore she has been curating and presenting exhibitions and art projects that embrace a wide range of mediums across many fields and disciplines.

Grace curates projects with the interests of community engagement: Big Happy Heart – Community Art Project (2007) was a project that assembled 1,500 paintings, which were created by patients, rehabilitants, students, artists, and people from all walks of life, into a giant artwork to convey the message: art heals. Charming Experience (2009) was a groundbreaking project that showcased artworks in which the audience could experience art through different senses. Made in Wetland (2010) guided the audience to appreciate the beauty of nature through various art workshops which were in coherence with the environment of Hong Kong Wetland Park. Budding Winter (2010) and ArtAlive@Park (2011) brought arts closer to the community by displaying artworks in parks in Hong Kong and nurtured young artists. She also organised the 11th International Expressive Arts Therapy Association Conference (2015), which drew professionals from different countries to discuss the implementation of art and therapy in improving the quality of life. No Boundaries: Reinterpreting Palace Museum Culture (2022), Dwelling in Tranquillity – Reinventing Traditional Gardens (2024), City Rhythms: Chinese Traditional Culture Reinterpreted (2025, Shanghai) and The Art Plaza Project at the Hong Kong Palace Museum (2026). Grace curated these exhibitions to offer a Hong Kong perspective and nurtures Hong Kong artists contributing to the study and appreciation of Hong Kong and Chinese art and culture.

Priscila Chu is a composer and interdisciplinary artist whose work spans sound, movement, visual media, and performance. Collaboration is central to her practice—an active compositional strategy through which different forms meet, reshape one another, and generate new artistic languages. Her work extends beyond instrumental composition into dance theatre, music–visual works, music theatre, and interactive installations, all grounded in the belief that art is a living, evolving process rather than a fixed outcome.

Her projects are human-centered and conceptually driven, often unfolding through intimate, immersive encounters that invite audiences into shifting states of perception. She explores themes of identity, attention, the digital condition, and the role of aesthetics in contemporary life, treating beauty not as ornamentation but as a vital mode of sensing and understanding the world.

Alongside her artistic practice, Priscila is an experienced educator committed to the transformative power of arts education. She has taught across primary, secondary, and tertiary institutions—including IB, international, and local schools—and works widely as an educator, facilitator, and trainer. Her teaching integrates inquiry-based, project-based, and direct approaches, nurturing creativity, critical thinking, discipline, and collaborative skills.

Her current focus lies in developing projects that bridge artistic creation, research, and community connection, cultivating spaces where artists, educators, and participants can explore how collaborative processes generate knowledge and reshape how we experience the world. Priscila holds degrees from York University, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and a PhD from Hong Kong Baptist University, where she researched collaborative arts and music composition.

Kate Cross MBE is Director of The Egg at Theatre Royal Bath. Starting in 1998 as Head of Education, she worked alongside Theatre Royal staff and Board to create and build The Egg, a theatre for children and young people, which opened in 2005 and has since initiated flagship programmes such as School Without Walls, Engage – Adult Creative Learning, The Incubator Idea Development Programme and The Egg Assembly online digital theatre training platform.

Prior to Bath she worked for various community arts initiatives across the south west of England. She is the current Chair of ASSITEJ UK, the national centre for the international network of Theatre for Young Audiences, ASSITEJ.

Mette Hjort is Chair Professor of Film and Media at The Education University of Hong Kong, where she serves as the founding Co-Director of the newly established Research Centre for Creative Arts and Public Value and as Head of the Department of Literature and Cultural Studies. Mette holds a PhD from the EHESS in Paris and an Honorary Doctorate in Transnational Cinema Studies from Aalborg University, Denmark. A film scholar with expertise in small national cinemas, transnational cinema, and cinema as a source of public value, Mette has served on the Board of the Danish Film Institute (appointed by the Danish Ministry of Culture). Mette’s fieldwork as a film scholar has taken her to West Africa, East Africa, and Palestine, and she regularly serves as a jury member at the Zanzibar International Film Festival. She collaborates with film practitioners on Zanzibar to create transnational learning opportunities for students from Hong Kong and Tanzania.

Victor Kwok oversees Education, Youth, Technology and Greater Bay Area research at Our Hong Kong Foundation (OHKF). He led and published numerous policy research reports, and advocated a series of actionable recommendations to raise talent competitiveness, drive industry growth, and to respond to societal development needs. Victor engages in extensive policy advocacy work as a speaker and panellist in various local and international educational summits, television, and other media channels. He is also a content contributor to leading local press and academic journals. 

Prior to joining OHKF, Victor was Assistant Vice President at the Investment Banking Division of Barclays, where he devised structured derivatives solutions for multinational corporate clients across Southeast Asia and Greater China.   

Victor has deep passion for community service and youth matters. He is a committee member of the All-China Youth Federation; member of HKSAR Committee on Innovation, Technology and Industry Development; member of Family Council and Deputy Convenor of Sub-committee on Family Support; member of Steering Committee on Promotion of Vocational and Professional Education and Training (VPET) and Qualifications Framework (QF); and a co-opt member of the Yuen Long District Council. He is invited by various Higher Education institutions as an advisor and a guest lecturer.

Victor graduated from The Chinese University of Hong Kong with a BBA in Global Business Studies, and obtained a Master of Public Administration from The University of Hong Kong. He scored 10 A’s in the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst and received Executive Leadership Education from the Harvard Business School.

Jigyasa Labroo is the Founder of Slam Out Loud (SOL), an Indian nonprofit that uses the transformative power of poetry, storytelling, theatre, and visual arts to build social-emotional learning (SEL) skills such as curiosity, imagination, and agency in children from underserved communities.

Rooted in the belief that every child deserves a voice, SOL runs a Fellowship for artist-educators across Delhi, Pune, Mumbai, and Bengaluru, and partners with the state governments of Punjab, Maharashtra, and Bihar to integrate arts and SEL into public school systems. Today, the organisation reaches over 900,000 children in person and has inspired the adaptation of its open-source content across 19 countries.

Jigyasa’s leadership blends creativity with systems thinking. Her work has been recognised by the OECD, World Bank, and New York University, and SOL is currently co-developing Punjab’s official state art textbook, reaching 2.5 million children, alongside an RCT with Harvard University and the Max Planck Institute.

She studied Learning Design at Harvard as a KC Mahindra Scholar, and is an Echoing Green Fellow, a Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia honouree, and HundrED’s 2023 Innovator of the Year. She has also been supported by platforms such as Falling Walls Berlin, WISE Qatar, Salzburg Global Seminar, and Art for Good Singapore.

A former teacher, Jigyasa brings over a decade of experience at the intersection of education, arts, and equity. Outside of work, she finds her grounding in music, travel, and long walks in nature—deeply believing that joyful learning and meaningful relationships are central to changing how education feels for children and educators alike.

Ms Heidi Lee is a seasoned arts administrator and currently serves as the Executive Director of Hong Kong Ballet. She has extensive experience across Hong Kong’s arts and cultural sector, having held leadership roles in programming, planning, education, and management at major institutions including the Hong Kong Repertory Theatre, Hong Kong Cultural Centre, Hong Kong Dance Company, and the Hong Kong Fringe Club.

In 2010, Ms Lee joined Shantou University as Executive Director of the Cheung Kong School of Art and Design, later becoming Associate Dean / Associate Professor in 2014. In 2018, she was appointed Director of Artistic Development at the Shantou University Sports Park. In 2024, she joined The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) as an Adjunct Associate Professor.

Ms Lee contributes actively to cultural and arts education development. She serves on advisory committees for the Cultural Management Master Programme at CUHK, the School of Dance of The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, the Art Education Centre and School of Humanities and Social Science at CUHK (Shenzhen), and the Hang Seng University of Hong Kong.

Ms Lee is the awardee of AmCham Women of Influence – Master of the Arts, 2021 and Asian Cultural Council Fellowship 2012.

Dr Simon Ng is an interdisciplinary scholar with nearly 30 years of experience working in the higher education as a teacher, researcher, author, and academic leader.  His academic areas span across law, social sciences, and education. He is currently Principal Head of General Education and Research at The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts.  Committed to the belief that people can improve their circumstances through collaboration, he is interested in institutional innovation through building ethos. A dedicated advocate for disability equality and inclusion, Simon advances the cause through scholarship, teaching, community engagement, and increasingly through arts and culture.  He is an Honorary Research Associate with the Faculty of Education (since 2020) and as a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Comparative and Public Law (since 2024) at The University of Hong Kong.  He is founding Executive Editor (Book Reviews) of the International Journal of Disability and Social Justice (since 2021) and served as an international trainer for the Harvard Law School Project on Disability (Harvard Shanghai Center) from 2014 – 2016.  Beyond academia, Simon co-founded an international secondary school and served on its board for over seven years.  He works closely with disability communities, serves on committees of charitable organisations, and sits on the boards of Artscompana (an inclusive arts company) and the Centre for Community Cultural Development (a community arts organisation).  An enthusiastic amateur sketcher and painter, he shares his artwork on Instagram and draws on his creative practice to promote inclusion. 

Ms Helen So was Head of the Arts, Culture, and Creative Industries Team in policy research and advocacy at Our Hong Kong Foundation. Ms So holds a Master of Studies in Musicology & Ethnomusicology at St Catherine’s College, University of Oxford. She is a cellist and continues to perform today.

Ms So’s public service includes various advisory roles appointed by the Hong Kong SAR Government. She currently serves on the Board of the Hong Kong Palace Museum, as well as the Committee of Venue Partnership under Leisure and Cultural Services Department (LCSD). She also served as Member of the Advisory Committee on Arts Development under Culture, Sports and Tourism Bureau (2018 – 2024), and of the Museum Advisory Committee, LCSD (2018 – 2024).