Cultural Policy in Singapore
CULTURAL POLICY IN SINGAPORE: NEGOTIATING ECONOMIC AND SOCIO-CULTURAL AGENDAS1
Lily Kong Associate Professor Department of Geography National University of Singapore Kent Ridge Singapore 119260
Email: lilykong@nus.edu.sg Fax: 65-7773091
Geoforum For Special Issue on “Culture, Economy, Policy”
2000
This paper was written while I was Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Oriental Culture, Tokyo University. I would like to record thanks to Assoc Prof Tong Chee Kiong for facilitating my attachment at the Institute of Oriental Culture. I am also grateful to Professor Takeshi Hamashita for taking time off his extremely busy schedule to extend hospitality. Thanks are also due to the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science for financing the fellowship and the National University of Singapore (NUS) for the travel grant.
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CULTURAL POLICY IN SINGAPORE: NEGOTIATING ECONOMIC AND SOCIO-CULTURAL AGENDAS
INTRODUCTION At the opening of a local conference titled “Art versus Art: Conflict and Convergence” in 1993, Ho Kwon Ping, Chairman of the Practice Performing Arts Centre, a private arts school, made the following observation about the increased attention paid to the arts in Singapore in the late 1980s and 1990s: We are moving so very rapidly in a national effort to change this underdeveloped state in the Arts. It was only in 1988 when the Ong Teng Cheong Advisory Council on Art and Culture completed its extended study. The change that has taken place in the last five years has been phenomenal: We now have a Cabinet Minister for the Arts, a National Arts Council, half a dozen professional performing companies, a National Gallery under renovation, arts major degree programmes in both universities and as much as $500 million set aside to build a world class arts centre scheduled to open before the year 20002 (Art vs Art, 1995:7). Indeed, the Singapore government aims to make the city-state a “global city of the arts” by the year 2000 and has spared
Lily Kong Associate Professor Department of Geography National University of Singapore Kent Ridge Singapore 119260
Email: lilykong@nus.edu.sg Fax: 65-7773091
Geoforum For Special Issue on “Culture, Economy, Policy”
2000
This paper was written while I was Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Oriental Culture, Tokyo University. I would like to record thanks to Assoc Prof Tong Chee Kiong for facilitating my attachment at the Institute of Oriental Culture. I am also grateful to Professor Takeshi Hamashita for taking time off his extremely busy schedule to extend hospitality. Thanks are also due to the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science for financing the fellowship and the National University of Singapore (NUS) for the travel grant.
1
1
CULTURAL POLICY IN SINGAPORE: NEGOTIATING ECONOMIC AND SOCIO-CULTURAL AGENDAS
INTRODUCTION At the opening of a local conference titled “Art versus Art: Conflict and Convergence” in 1993, Ho Kwon Ping, Chairman of the Practice Performing Arts Centre, a private arts school, made the following observation about the increased attention paid to the arts in Singapore in the late 1980s and 1990s: We are moving so very rapidly in a national effort to change this underdeveloped state in the Arts. It was only in 1988 when the Ong Teng Cheong Advisory Council on Art and Culture completed its extended study. The change that has taken place in the last five years has been phenomenal: We now have a Cabinet Minister for the Arts, a National Arts Council, half a dozen professional performing companies, a National Gallery under renovation, arts major degree programmes in both universities and as much as $500 million set aside to build a world class arts centre scheduled to open before the year 20002 (Art vs Art, 1995:7). Indeed, the Singapore government aims to make the city-state a “global city of the arts” by the year 2000 and has spared