West Kowloon Cultural District: Graham Sheffield better brace himself

England's Barbican Centre artistic director Graham Sheffield has been appointed as the first chief executive of the West Kowloon Cultural District. Although Sheffield admits that he has little insight on local arts and culture, he vows to create "global impact" with the cultural hub.

The last senior official hired by the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority was Angus Cheng Siu-chuen -- a former Disney executive -- who quit after a week on the job.

Sheffield has signed on for 3 years with the WKCDA and seems determined to "put Hong Kong firmly on the map of a must-see, must-experience destination for culture seekers across the world."

He's also confident that he will be able to handle the forest of thorns that is Hong Kong and Beijing bureacracy.

"You deal with politics in the arts, and it's important to have politicians on your side. I've done a lot of it in my career. I have my own tricks to bend the rules and get around them," said Sheffield.

We hope for his sanity's sake that his bag of tricks will translate well in the context of Chinese red tape.

Blogger Big Lychee certainly has his doubts:

"[Sheffield] will find that orchestras, ballets, portrait collections and statuary will be the least of his problems. There will be volatile, trendy young creative types demanding time and space for the latest Canto-avant-garde out of Shatin. He’ll have Chinese opera activists with connections in Beijing and a zero-tolerance attitude to uppity barbarians. There will be Christian fundamentalists crawling all over the place ready to screech in outrage at the slightest hint of nudity. There will be friction, rivalry, backstabbing and disharmony everywhere, except among the 7 million people of Hong Kong, who will stubbornly refuse to show the slightest shred of enthusiasm for any of it, except maybe if a bit of nudity sneaks in -- Salome, say."

Sheffield takes up the estimated HK$3 million a year post in August. Good luck, man.