O’Grady: on music, photography and the importance of creativity

By Chloe Sze and Naomi Wong

O’Grady conducting a school orchestra performance. 

Tom O’Grady has been working at RCHK for two years now and has been running many after school clubs, as well as conducting and working behind the scenes at many events during his two years of teaching in our school. You might just have watched a few performances by RC students that he has taught and conducted! The RCHK Truth interviewed him to learn more about him.

Can you give us a basic introduction about yourself? What are your hobbies?

I’m Mr. O’Grady, a music teacher in RC. This is my second year in RC. It has been a strange time, isn’t it for everyone? I’ve been living in Hong Kong on and off for nine years now, I’ve moved away then came back. I used to work in a different school in Hong Kong. It’s been nice to travel , try different food, I also like different arts and yes, I DO like photography!”

You came to RCHK in a difficult time due to Covid. What has been the most enjoyable thing for you so far? 

It’s been a crazy time, hasn’t it? I mean for you students, you guys had the protest before this so it’s been disruptive. Your whole secondary is pretty much crazy like you guys had the protest, then the virus. So I’m trying to be positive with the virus and I think we’ve had such a disruptive time but I think it’s been nice to have projects and I think new students had to be real problem solvers, and some of the work we’ve seen were quite interesting and different. I suppose there are some things that are in your control and there are things that aren’t in your control and you gotta focus on what is in your control and how you use your time: like when we were in online learning we did different things and we had time to approach the project in a different way. There’s definitely lots of artistic students here and that part is great. I think there’s lots and lots of very musical students and it’s great to see such involvement in students such as clubs like ‘Idol’ which is coming up. We got Idol back again in the playgrounds 10th of June: be there! And we got lots of passion from students. We started these lunchtime performances near the playground outside the PAC during Christmas and we are going to bring them back again. Not now. It is a bit warm now but when it gets cooler in autumn, we aim to do that. We get so many students coming forward to perform and it’s great!

How did your idea to teach music start? 

I think creativity is very important, it is a very valuable skill and I think creativity is something that is needed in many different parts of life: to create things, to be creative in many walks of life; also to think about how it feels to be someone else and to be emotive and considerate to others. I think you need a certain level of creativity to experience how other people feel so I think it’s probably an undervalued skill and I think in the modern world as AI starts to grow as well. I think it’s even more important because human creativity is the strongest skill as a species.

How long do you plan on staying in this school as a teacher?

I - D - K, I don’t know, it’s very difficult to predict the future. It is a very difficult time but all I can say is that I’ve really enjoyed this school so far.

What advice do you wish to give to Year 6 students or upcoming students who will have you next year? 

I think it’s a bit of a step up from Year 6 to Year 7. I want to see as many Year 7 students involved in clubs and performances and showcase all their great musical skills.

How did you start engaging in photography? Why do you like photography so much? 

I think Hong Kong is a great place for photography, Hong Kong is really good for it; I think Hong Kong has so many great opportunities for it. When you travel a lot, not traveling much right now but in normal times, it’s a great opportunity to see new places and experiment with different photography. There is so much great technology right now and the technological advancements have been amazing. I think it’s also very easy to take photos so I’m trying to be more creative with what I’m doing at the moment.

Where’s your favorite place for photography?

I’d probably say Hong Kong since it is very difficult to beat since you have nature, amazing cities, very interesting micro-climates as well. So you got lots of interesting landscapes like cloud, lots of low mist, you’ve got different lights and different situations that are brought in in different seasons.

Why did you choose to be a music teacher over being a photographer? 

I think I really got into photography in the last couple of years.  I’ve been a music teacher for ten years now and just started to be interested in photography.

Who are your favorite artists? 

When you’re asking about photography, I like it when different arts are brought together. I like a lot of multimedia stuff, so I like involving film and music and photography and many more. So I think it’s really fun to do different multimedia projects. What I like in music is a variation of multimedia. It’s so difficult to pick, but I think probably David Bowie.

You can support Mr O’Grady in both music and photography by following him @tjogr on Instagram!