MARISA YIU is the Co-founder and Executive Director of the DESIGN TRUST initiative, that supports creative and research content related to Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area. She has been instrumental in shaping the growth of the NGO since 2014 and created and conceptualise the Design Trust Futures Studio programme. Yiu is also an architect and Founding Partner of ESKYIU, an award winning multi-disciplinary architecture and research design studio actively integrating culture, community, art and technology based in Hong Kong. She was the Chief Curator of the 2009 Hong Kong & Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture located at the West Kowloon waterfront; and curated Studio-X Shenzhen. Along with her partner Eric Schuldenfrei, they were awarded the ‘Architectural League Prize’ for their installations featured in the Venice Biennale received Architectural Record’s Design Vanguard recognition and Design for Asia Award for Ephemera, commissioned by Swire Art Basel and Movement culture: installation for Ido Portal. Yiu’s work and writings have been published in A/D, Domus China, MIT’s Thresholds, and Architectural Record among others and spoken at numerous global platforms including TEDxCUHK, BoDW, UNESCO forum and at Harvard’s AsiaGSD conference. She has taught at London’s Architectural Association, Parsons, HKU, School of Architecture at CUHK.Yiu is an AIA member, HKIA associate, served on the Board of Advisors for RTHK (seven years term), and formerly a Board member of the Hong Kong Ambassadors of Design.

Simon Birch is a British-born artist living and working in Hong Kong who is renowned for the kinetic, cinematic quality of his paintings which have been exhibited in solo shows in Beijing, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Miami and Singapore, and in group shows at the Hong Kong Museum of Art, Haunch of Venison, London, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo. His most recent solo exhibition is “Return Love Star Collider” (Hong Kong, 2020), at Lane Crawford, ifc Mall, which is a snapshot of Birch's regular practice, a return to paint, the foundation of his work as an artist.  Birch’s work has been featured and reviewed in many international publications, including The Guardian, The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, ArtForum, DAZED and VICE. In recent years he has become renowned as the conceptual and creative force behind visionary, large-scale projects involving collaborative work with filmmakers, musicians, performers, designers, architects and makers to deliver ambitious site-specific projects in specifically configured spaces. Major projects to date include the celebrated Hope & Glory: A Conceptual Circus (Hong Kong and Beijing, 2010), Daydreaming With… The Hong Kong Edition (Hong Kong, 2012). and The 14th Factory (Los Angeles 2017). 

Septime Webre is an internationally recognised ballet director, choreographer, educator and advocate. He joined Hong Kong Ballet as its Artistic Director in July 2017 after 17 years as Artistic Director of The Washington Ballet in Washington DC, US from 1999-2016. Previously he served as Artistic Director of the American Repertory Ballet, based in Princeton, New Jersey, US from 1993-1999. In addition, Webre has served as the Artistic Director of Halcyon, a Washington DC-based foundation, launching an annual international Festival for Creativity in Washington DC in June 2018. During Webre’s tenure at The Washington Ballet, the institution’s budget grew by 500%, and it enjoyed unprecedented advances in the scope and quality of its work on stage, in the size and reach of its professional school, and in the development of several far-reaching community engagement programmes, which he founded. Webre launched an array of artistic initiatives including The American Experience, which developed great works of literature into full-length ballets, including The Great Gatsby and Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises among others. As a choreographer, Webre’s works appear in the repertoires of ballet companies throughout North America, including Pacific Northwest Ballet, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, Colorado Ballet, Ballet West, Atlanta Ballet, Cincinnati Ballet, Ballet Austin, Ballet Memphis, Milwaukee Ballet, Kansas City Ballet, Ballet Concierto de Puerto Rico, and many others, and he has worked frequently in theatre as well as opera. As a dancer, Webre was featured in solo and principal roles from the classical repertoire as well as in contemporary works by choreographers such as Twyla Tharp, Paul Taylor and Merce Cunningham. He has served on the juries of a number of international ballet competitions, including those in Varna, Bulgaria, Istanbul, Cape Town, New York, Seoul, and elsewhere. He has served on the board of Dance/USA and his work has received numerous honors, grants and awards. He holds a degree in History/Pre-Law from the University of Texas at Austin, and is the seventh son in a large, boisterous Cuban-American family.