"This journey made me realise that there are many, many ways to contribute to the arts landscape – you’re not a failure, you just need to find the one that best works for you."
During this period, we would like to share with you a series of interviews from our leaders, other creative members in our community and behind the scene glimpses of our youth theatre.
Kat Roma Greer is the founder of Micro Galleries, a free global arts initiative and virtual creative hub that uses art as a vehicle to create positive social change. This includes creative interventions in public spaces, workshops, art tours and more, working together with communities who are in some kind of social or creative need. Kat is also a former Faust Leader who led our teen programmes almost a decade ago.
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| Caught in the act in Kathmandu, Nepal |
Secret Origins
I grew up in a pretty low socio-economic area in Australia. It was a sport-focused town, and I even went to a sports high school, but weirdly I was completely and thoroughly addicted to the arts in all its forms. The problem was, this was a working class town where there was no real understanding of, or opportunity for arts. It was a little “Billy Elliot”-esque without anyone else really singing and dancing across the street! We were all expected to get real jobs that paid real money – not sing and dance and write and paint. There was considerable (relative) poverty, personal and local conflict, no real sense of a positive community. Public spaces were often dangerous or at least, threatening.
Strangely (I still don’t quite understand why!) I was relentless in my pursuit of art, performance and creation. I worked a couple of part time jobs during school and paid for singing lessons, and then much to my amazement, gained entry into a BCA; BA (Theatre and English Literature) and then went on to a MA (Research) in Performance Studies, which really provided a strong foundation for my practice and future endeavours, as well as an amazing network of creatives who I still work with.
Since then, I have trained and practiced my craft extensively across theatre, classical singing, some exceptionally bad piano playing, contemporary performance-making, performance installation, co-founding the arts collective Rue de la Rocket, worked in the arts industry in Australia and Asia, and have become an accidental curator and Artistic Director of a global, independent free public arts initiative, Micro Galleries.
Was there a moment where you realised you wanted to be an artist as a career? And/ Or realised that being an artist could be a career?
I think, like many creatives, it was less that I had a realisation that I wanted a career as an artist, and more that there really was absolutely no other option for me that could bring any
fulfilment. As many creatives do, I worked in a variety of jobs to pay the rent, but I never considered any of them my career. They did all provide a strong skills set for me that helped me build my career as an artist, but they did not give me a sense of contribution, achievement or enrichment. I think it’s important for anyone who wants a career in the arts
to understand that it is not a “usual” career path for most, but that doesn’t mean it is inaccessible – you just need to be flexible, resourceful, and play the long-game.
What was the biggest failure you faced as an artist and was there anything you learnt from it?
My initial training was reasonably traditional. I was only taught that there was one aspect of and pathway to industry success: train in a specific medium, finish training and get an agent or representative, go to loads of auditions for things you often don’t care about – like advertisements, hope to eventually get on a main stage or in a reputable gallery. I ran this bizarre race for a while and found it dehumanising and demoralising. So many wonderful
creative, talented and intelligent people were often treated badly or disregarded. I left these auditions or rehearsals feeling really confused about what I was doing and like a huge failure. I pretty much gave up for several years after that and focused on earning some money. Eventually I found my way back via an amazing arts organisation in Sydney called PACT centre for emerging artists, where my eyes were opened up to multi and inter-disciplinary ways of performing and creating that had much more creative exploration, community involvement, knowledge-sharing and widening the practice we were trained in.
This journey made me realise that there are many, many ways to contribute to the arts landscape – you’re not a failure, you just need to find the one that best works for you.
What were things that helped you when you were in your late teens and twenties to make sure your work was of a good standard?
Go and watch, observe and learn from absolutely every creative you can. I look back and realise that it is sometimes less about what you are actually doing, than about observing and learning from what others are or aren’t doing. Find someone you really admire in your area of practice, look at what they did and do, and learn from that. Also, practise, practise, practise, practise. So many creatives don’t feel the need to continuously practise but I was lucky enough to also have a background as a musician and was surrounded by people who would practise between 2 – 6 hours a day, even if they had nothing coming up. I think so many creative practitioners could learn from this discipline.
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| Artwork in Patan, Nepal |
How do you measure the success of a performance or art piece?
I think there are many measures: technique, relevance, authenticity, understanding of historical and contemporary context, creative uniqueness…but to be honest, for me it
always comes down to impact. The simplest and most unintentional work can be powerful if it impacts you in some way and enriches my life in some way, however small. I think this also gives creatives courage to put their work out there if they believe it can have impact. It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just needs to be given to the audience with the belief that they may get something from it.
You have a background in theatre and have taught at Faust for a few years. What importance does theatre have for students?
In my mind, it is essential. It gives a tool-kit for young people to be able to engage with historical and contemporary narratives, learn to critique and unpack them, and to have the courage to voice their own opinions and interpretations of them. It is also a platform that gives the right to tell your own narrative and story, with courage and confidence. I can’t think of a single career that wouldn’t benefit from those skills, nor a community that wouldn’t benefit from more of their own stories being told.
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What kind of topics / motivations for art interested you when you were younger and has that changed very much compared to now?
I was a Shakespeare junkie! I could spend hours dissecting and unpacking good ol’ “Hamlet.” Though I still have a love for classical literature and theatre, I certainly have moved away from this and am now extremely interested in contemporary forms of creation – especially those that intersect with political/environmental/social issues and engage the community. Come to think of it, maybe I haven’t moved very far away from Shakespeare at all!
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| The Opening of Micro Galleries at Junction Station, Nowra, Australia |
What is the secret origin of Micro Galleries?
Feeling like things were just plain unfair. I believe everyone has the right to access art and creative expression no matter how much money they earn, how much education they have
or how much confidence they possess. In HK, a lot of artforms, visual art particularly, is locked away in pristine, high-end spaces or government-run buildings that many people are intimidated to go into for the simple enjoyment of art, or they don’t have the finances to purchase a ticket or get lessons. Therefore, they simply don’t engage with art. This also means that art here sometimes is not seen as having any value unless it has a large commercial value. Performance and other live arts have a hard time being present as rehearsal and performance spaces are so difficult to access due to high rents and small spaces. Therefore, in a bid to alter this landscape in a small way, I decided to reclaim some small areas of public space, and public access to art, as a way to change our perception on how art can be engaged with and who has a right to access and enjoy it, i.e., everyone.
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| Participating artists at work in Nepal |
You have championed so many artists and have fostered a creative community around you who make fantastic art for all. What do you think contributes to create and sustain a successful creative community?
This was certainly an unexpected but amazing outcome of creating Micro Galleries – we have a network of hundreds of artists around the world. I believe the key to this being
successful is firstly, understanding that we all have so much to learn from each other. I come from such a privileged position and it’s important to realise that not everyone we
work with has the same resources, or the same perception of the world. I view these networks as amazing opportunities to increase our global knowledge. I also think we need
to understand that people from other cultures communicate and create very differently – no particular method is better than another, but working with the different methods of
communication is hugely important. The global collective is also extremely supportive of each other, often lending advice or resources or even a bed for the night! Finally, I take
advantage of the in numerous social media and online platforms that enable us to all remain very connected with our global collective.
On a Micro Galleries project in Jakarta, we reclaimed and cleaned a field that the community were using to dump and burn rubbish and transformed it into a public performance space. We invited the community in to enjoy a range of live performance for the night. A hugely powerful moment was a local contemporary theatre group that performed. At one point the work had the actors doing some very impressive physical theatre and moving through the audience that were all standing amongst partial jungle, with bamboo lights burning – it was so mysterious and powerful and completely “out-of-place” that it totally blew everyone’s mind. It was an amazing moment that demonstrated the power of live performance, wherever you are.
How are you dealing with this past year with protests and the coronavirus personally and professionally?
It has been disastrous professionally – all of my major projects that I had been working towards for 9 months+ were cancelled and all opportunities for professional development, networking and generating new opportunities disappeared. Arts is often the first thing to be abandoned by governments and funding bodies in times of conflict or disruption and so a lot of funding and platforms have been obliterated in many places around the world. But artists are so familiar with the state of uncertainty and the unknown – so in a strange way we are the best equipped to deal with this unique global situation.
I have personally been dealing with the protests and pandemic through understanding that we are living in an incredible period that is really challenging all of our systems, constructs and personal understanding of how the world works, and using that to inform what I want my role in my community and the world to be. I have this extraordinary space and time now to view and process all of that. I am also using this time to make my world small, focus on
my family and the small things in our lives that are important – cooking dinner, reading with my son, writing or drawing something I never usually have time to do.
Professionally, I am harnessing the power of being able to work with restriction, lack of resources and the unknown and re-creating ways of Micro Galleries working and serving
communities. Again, this has provided an opportunity to look at new ways of working and contributing to communities.
How is isolating yourself at home affecting your work and art?
It is forcing me to focus on the things I really find important and want to work on, and not be distracted by a huge amount of external disruptions and influences that would normally occur or tempt me every day!
What upcoming projects have you got coming up?
I am about to launch Micro Galleries new 2020 program Respond/Revive. We will be taking some time as a global collective to respond to the pandemic, and then be transforming our work into projects that reimagine and provide creative blueprints for a post-COVID19 world – perhaps one that is much more generous, caring, conscious and inclusive.
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