Artists' Advocacy in Singapore: A Changing Drama (Industry Paper) (original) (raw)

The State and the New Society: The Role of the Arts in Singapore Nation-building

This paper takes an historical perspective on the trajectory of Singapore’s arts and cultural landscape from 1965 to 2000. It examines the arts and cultural field as an ideological site within which the People’s Action Party government constantly sought to reinvent or vision a new society. From harnessing the arts for the task of creating ‘‘civilised’’ and ‘‘cultured’’ citizens immediately after independence, as well as to play out multicultural fantasies, to the government’s ‘Global City for the Arts’ project in the 1990s for economic imperatives, arts and culture has not only been ideologically instrumental for nation-building purposes but also malleable to the ruling elite’s changing visions of Singapore society. The PAP government’s deployment of art to establish orthodoxy is a recurring feature in the paper, including its cooption of ‘‘renaissance’’ themes as early as 1980, thus purging ideals of romanticism from public discourse. The paper concludes that Singapore’s cultural policy, although driven by economic impulses, will continue to be an important ideological instrument for nation-building.

Art and Politics in Singapore: Beyond LKY at VWFA

Asian Art Newspaper, London, 2010

A ugust is flag month in Singapore. As nationalist fever -genuine or co-opted-grips the city-state, the island's centres of culture, like its malls, play up the high-summer theme as they do Christmas and the lunar New Year.

Making Space. Singapore, Artists & Art in the Public Realm

The Journal of Public Space, 5, 2020

In recent times Singaporean artists have undertaken audacious artistic performances, actions and interventions in public space, highlighting the role of artists as provocateurs of debates around public space and their engagement with issues related to ethical urbanism. Between 2010-2020 artists working in diverse fields of artistic practice including visual art, street art, performance art, community arts and new genre public art begun to locate their artwork in public spaces, reaching new audiences whilst forging new conversations about access, inclusion and foregrounding issues around spatial justice. In contesting public space, artists have centralized citizens in a collective discourse around building and shaping the nation. The essay documents key projects, artists and organisations undertaking artistic responses in everyday places and examines the possibility of public art in expanding concepts of 'the public' through actions in Singapore's public space, and demonstrating the role of artists in civil society.

Global Ambitions: Positioning Singapore as a Contemporary Arts Hub

The State and the Arts in Singapore: Policies and Institutions, 2018

This chapter critically interrogates the utilisation of the visual arts by the state as a means to position Singapore as an international arts hub and marketplace. It offers an overview of the programmes and initiatives introduced by the state from the 1990s to present-day in order to encourage the entry of international art galleries and major commercial platforms, and to position Singapore as a key player in the international art marketplace. This chapter also includes an exploration of some of the tensions, if not contradictions, in this pursuit of global city status. With examples such as Gillman Barracks, Art Stage, Singapore Biennale and cultural diplomacy, this chapter demonstrates how the visual arts have been integral to Singapore's imagination of itself as a global arts city.

The Arts and Culture Strategic Review Report: Harnessing the Arts for Community-Building in Singapore

The State and the Arts in Singapore: Policies and Institutions, 2018

In 2010, The Arts and Culture Strategic Review (ACSR) was initiated to chart the next phase of cultural development in Singapore. The final report, which was released in 2012, appears to propose a paradigm shift in focus for arts and cultural policy making in Singapore: from the desire to manage the arts and cultural sectors into profitable creative industries to the utilisation of the arts and culture as expedient tools for social cohesion and community building in Singapore. The shift has resulted in government programmes placing (renewed) importance and emphasis in 'community arts' as a cultural activity. This chapter critically examines the early years of this shift towards a socio-cultural focus and it ensuing promotion of 'community arts'. Through an analysis of the rationales, formulation and implementation of the ACSR, this chapter will demonstrate how the ACSR is not an illogical discontinuity from previous cultural policies. Rather, the ACSR is a reaffirmation of the government's deep-rooted desire to harness the arts and culture as ideological tools to socialise the migrant society into a cohesive community. This chapter will also show that the ACSR's invocation of 'community' is a strategic response to the current socio-economic and political realities in Singapore. Finally, this chapter will also highlight some key challenges that the government faces in pursuing a community arts agenda in Singapore.

The Singapore Arts Landscape: Influences, Tensions, Confluences, and Possibilities for the Learning Context

Contextualized Practices in Arts Education: An International Dialogue on Singapore, 2013

The chapter synthesizes relevant literature on arts education in Singapore and discusses its evolving context in the city-state. It locates the position of the arts in the history of Singapore before and after its independence, during and after its brief merger with Malaysia, and from its early years as a fledgling city-state to its current position as an affluent nation in the Southeast Asian region. On the one hand, it takes into account the evolving cultural policy crafted and enacted by a strong state and which has had significant impact on the local arts and culture. On the other, it rearticulates perspectives on Singapore arts and culture from the local artists and the academic community by highlighting what may be regarded as alternative expressions to the statist account of the Singapore arts landscape. Tensions and contradictions that interlace the development of Singapore arts and culture and that offer constraints, challenges, and potential opportunities for arts teaching and learning are also brought to the fore. A commentary on these tensions and contradictions is then provided (Chapter 2). The commentary expresses the confluences that arise from these tensions as well as some possibilities for the learning context.

Arts Education in Singapore: Between Rhetoric and Reality

Study of the trajectory of arts education in Singapore through examination of key policies and government reports suggests that, although the arts and arts education have generally taken a back seat to other national priorities, the government has consistently utilized them for ideological and political purposes. Arts education is typically subjected to the bureaucratic imagination, which assigns to arts education a particular state-sanctioned role. Whether to ennoble students as citizens of a newly independent nation or to endow them with the innovativeness believed to be necessary to a knowledge-based economy, arts education in Singapore has often shouldered the sociocultural aspirations of the ruling elite. This has been true even if the subject has not always been the recipient of unwavering political support.