Makers of The Metaverse: Terry Guy Of Secret Wall On The Future Of The VR, AR & Mixed Reality Industries
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Network + Collaborate — Need to surround yourself with a solid supporting network and experiment.
The Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality & Mixed Reality Industries are so exciting. What is coming around the corner? How will these improve our lives? What are the concerns we should keep an eye out for? Aside from entertainment, how can VR or AR help work or other parts of life? To address this, we had the pleasure of interviewing Terry Guy.
Where the notions of originality and creativity intersect, Terry Guy is at the center. As a creative visionary, Terry Guy founded Secret Walls in London in 2006, building a stage where there wasn’t one — for artists and their communities — to gather, celebrate, and be inspired. By seeing artists as athletes and leaning into the Art of Competition, Terry unlocked some of the most unique, sought-after IRL + URL programming in the world — the true global leader in live art entertainment.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you tell us a bit about your backstory and how you grew up?
My name is Terry Guy and I am currently living in Los Angeles, but I’m originally from the magical Isle of Wight, an island off the south coast of England. I studied Digital Design and Animation in London but after graduating I quickly realized that finding a proper job was tough. So, in 2006, I created Secret Walls — a live illustration battle platform where artists take a stage to show off their talent and compete to win. The vision was to disrupt the dusty art gallery scene, entertain fans, support local artists and showcase the best creativity on the planet.
Secret Walls is a LIVE Arts and Entertainment company that is known for the Paint and NFT Battles we have hosted in 50+ countries around the world.
Is there a particular book, film, or podcast that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
The energy of the city nightlife and the urban landscape were my two inspirations when creating Secret Walls. I was also inspired by films like Fight Club, Style Wars, Battle Royale and Warriors as well as Secret Wars comics. Live competitive sports also play a role in how I structure a Secret Walls battle. Football (soccer) is the reason why 90 mins is how long a battle takes. I’d have to say the one book that played a huge role in my entrepreneurial spirit was It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be by ad man Paul Arden — This made me feel like everything was possible.
Is there a particular story that inspired you to pursue a career in the creative industry? We’d love to hear it.
When I was younger, I was never focused at school and always achieved the minimum to get to the next level. I knew I wanted to do something creative but my options at the time were limited. I remember one night when I was 16, my uncle and aunt came over for dinner and gave me some great advice. I always looked up to them because they were both entrepreneurial and traveled around the world for business. They encouraged me to embrace my passion for creativity and move to the big city of London. This inspired me to pursue a creative career via University in London, but to get there I needed to do more than just the minimum. So that is what I did — I got my grades up and went to college to study computer programming and then ended up at University a few years later living a dream studying digital arts and animation.
My upbringing and story from a working class family helps me stayed grounded to this day and allows me to understand and communicate with the kids of today who do not see arts as cool or a future career option. My mission with what we do at Secret Walls Academy is to make them see it as a fun subject and one with infinite potential — Telling the Secret Walls story and showing them what we do and that we get paid to make street art and illustrations, really does make their faces light up. They can quite quickly see how comics, movies, video games, sports all weaves into the arts, and now we have web3 technology / innovation layered over the top of that. The next ten years will be a fun and fruitful space for those that put the work in!
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began this fascinating career?
There are so many fun adventures, but the one that really stands out was the Secret Walls Euroleague that we created in 2010. This was an ambitious tournament concept that I dreamt up where we recruited 17 city teams to participate across the year. We were able to work miracles and brought in Casio, Edding, Ecko, and Reebok to sponsor an amazing year-long event that included over 50 battles. We would battle 2–3 times a week and had super fans flying out to the various European cities to come support. The sporting and competitive side of Secret Walls was really born out of this project and made us see the much larger potential a brand like ours could achieve. I had artists telling me that they were traveling for the first time and that these creative events were inspiring them to go bigger.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Here’s a funny one…I remember when Marc Ecko told me and the team to buy this thing called Bitcoin back when it launched in 2009 and was cents on the dollar per coin. We didn’t have a clue what he was talking about when he said “crypto coins” but I wrote it down to research. The funny and regrettable part was I didn’t follow up and only recently found that notebook that says “Marc Ecko says to buy some Bitcoin.” Moral of the story: When someone who is already very successful tells you to do something…just get it done ASAP.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
When Secret Walls first started, Marc Ecko was one of our biggest supporters. He came from the graffiti world and became a hip hop/media multimillionaire very quickly. He built huge companies and has a great vision for arts and business. We were very fortunate that he found us early and saw the potential in Secret Walls…probably before we realized it ourselves. Marc gave us our first few sponsorship checks, bought the original canvases and was always there to give us solid business advice. Keen to reconnect with him one day soon to show him what we have built.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
Everything we do is built with the SYLA (Support Your Local Artist) DNA in mind, and we always want to shine a spotlight on new talent and inspire audiences young and old to have fun and see the arts in new ways. Secret Walls has built a community and high energy show around the Art of Competition. This is a powerful movement that will expand in its fandom in the coming years.
There are tons of exciting new updates coming this year with some big ones just announced, such as the evolution of Secret Walls from a black and white original paint battle has now evolved with new digital battle formats that are in full color. We also have a huge bus tour in the works that we are very excited about. You are the first to hear about it outside of the Secret Walls HQ but we are excited to share more info soon on what cities across the US we will be battling in.
Ok super. Thank you for all that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. The VR, AR and MR industries seem so exciting right now. What are the 3 things in particular that most excite you about the industry? Can you explain or give an example?
Secret Walls and the battle universe transfer very easily into VR, AR and MR — we already have a year of battle tests behind us in some of these spaces and the future is very exciting. The 3 things that most excite me about the industry include web3 mentality, DAO’s and disruptive blockchain NFT ownership. All of this will lead to a strong creator’s economy, a reality we have been dreaming about since day one.
This new web3 world offers so much opportunity to an art community like ours that make the new horizons look endless with what can be achieved with some hard work and hustle. What makes me very bullish in this new world is that we have a tried and tested brand that still stands strong 16 years on and now we enter this new era that is offering us solutions to problems we could not solve previously. Everything from protecting artwork IP, royalties paid correctly through the blockchain, getting the art into the home of the masses using VR and digital tech.
The tech is evolving so fast it is hard to keep up but we are slowly surrounding ourselves with smart leaders from these worlds and have opened our IP and platform up to try any fun experiments. We will always approach everything we do from a “Live Arts Entertainment” viewpoint first and then look to add any layers that enhances the experience, the show, the art and gets us to the moonshot goal of getting live art back in the Olympics.
What are the 3 things that concern you about the VR, AR and MR industries? Can you explain? What can be done to address those concerns?
Probably the main concerns at this point would be digital fatigue, equitable access, and global warming.
We consider these issues every day as we build and develop in this space. We will always lean in with our IRL experiences first and then add URL digital elements that will be layered bonuses, so we hope our crowd will not get screen fatigue. Solving the equitable part is a big one that we are always conscious about. Our Support Your Local Artist DNA will always naturally serve a diverse group of artists, mainly those young upstarts and rising stars. The Secret Walls Academy, an arts immersion program that provide teens around the US and globe with a hands-on education in free-style drawing, character design, commercial design, and mural planning, all while fostering open collaboration and enhancing storytelling abilities, will start to tour and help bring the arts and knowledge to kids in underserved areas that need that extra support. In the long run, we dream of creating open online resource spaces that will house conversations for everyone to attend and learn from. Lastly, the environment gets a lot of attention in the media right now and we are aware of the concerns. We hope that as this technology matures, the chains will get greener and more efficient like any other growing industry. Until then, we will always do what we can to offset any projects and do good to our local communities through sensible initiatives.
I think the entertainment aspects of VR, AR and MR are apparent. Can you share with our readers how these industries can help us at work?
VR, AR and MR create capacities for innovation and flexibility at work. Using Instagram Live, Facebook, VR, and other livestream technologies, we have been able to bring in a far larger audience for our eponymous illustration battles, creating a more accessible atmosphere than ever. This virtual shift allowed for even more capabilities to grow our brand into the virtual space.
Are there other ways that VR, AR and MR can improve our lives? Can you explain?
I think we will see huge innovations using this technology in all industries. The way you buy a house can change with the use of VR tours and possibly purchasing a home through the blockchain. There’s growth potential in the healthcare industry with the use of AR glasses for surgeons and VR doctor appointments. It can also extend to how we communicate with our friends and family. Can you imagine a family dinner where family members attend via hologram or a birthday party totally done in the metaverse? It’s a wild time to be alive and being a kid that grew up through the 16-bit SEGA era, I am excited for what is to come.
What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about working in your industry? Can you explain what you mean?
The myths I am always looking to correct are how the mass audience sees street art, graffiti and the types of alternative talent we have built our brand around. Typically, when people hear these labels, they think of vandals and crime but over the last 10 years this type of urban art has become more pop culture and accepted in everyday advertising and museums. There has been a nice shift and education here, we still have a way to go but we have come a long way since the first graffiti on subway trains back in the 1960’s with legends like Cornbread, Crash and DONDI.
What are your “5 Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Career In The VR, AR or MR Industries?”
Skillset — Have great ideas and the talent to bring those to life.
Work Rate — Need to be ready to put the hours in and hustle harder than most.
Team — Need a core crew around you that believe in your vision.
Network + Collaborate — Need to surround yourself with a solid supporting network and experiment.
Hype — Be your own hype man and marketing machine through social media and beyond.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
I dream of a world where every kid can create with the tools they need to excel. I would love for Secret Walls to help inspire and inject some energy and fun into the outdated art programs most schools around the world teach. Art and design are needed for pretty much everything we consume, buy and experience and I would love for students rich or poor to understand how to connect the dots of arts and business. Helping more kids get online and using these exciting future tools will create huge change in their lives and inspire them to go onto be the best version of themselves and possibly change the world along the way.
We are very blessed that very prominent leaders read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂
I have many heroes and inspirations but for me I would love to sit down with Swizz Beats and chat arts, culture, Verzuz, Secret Walls and how we can build more creative platforms for the next generation. He has DM’ed our brand on Instagram before but we are now ready to show him the blueprint 🙂 Swizz if you are reading, hit me up ☎️
Thank you so much for these excellent stories and insights. We wish you continued success on your great work!
Makers of The Metaverse: Terry Guy Of Secret Wall On The Future Of The VR, AR & Mixed Reality… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
