![Entrance of Goodman Arts Centre, Singapore](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Entrance_of_Goodman_Arts_Centre%2C_Singapore.jpg)
The National Arts Council (NAC) is a
statutory board established on 15 October 1991 to oversee the development of arts in
Singapore
Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...
. It is under the purview of the
Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth
The Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth (MCCY; ms, Kementerian Kebudayaan, Masyarakat dan Belia; ; ta, கலாசார, சமூக, இளையர்துறை அமைச்சு) is a ministry of the Government of Singapore ...
. The NAC provides grants, scholarships, awards and platforms for arts practitioners, as well as arts education and programmes for the general public.
History
In 1989, the Advisory Council on Culture and the Arts, chaired by Deputy Prime Minister
Ong Teng Cheong
Ong Teng Cheong ( zh, c=王鼎昌, p=Wáng Dǐngchāng; 22 January 1936 – 8 February 2002) was a Singaporean politician who served as the fifth president of Singapore between 1993 and 1999. He was also the first elected president in Singapor ...
, produced a report assessing the status of various aspects of arts in Singapore. The report would form the blueprint for cultural policy in Singapore, and led to the establishment of the National Arts Council and
National Heritage Board to spearhead the development of arts in Singapore.
In 1991, the National Arts Council (NAC) was formed from the amalgamation of the Singapore Cultural Foundation, Cultural Division of Ministry of Community Development, Festival of Arts Secretariat and the National Theatre Trust.
Organisation structure
The NAC is made up of the following departments: Education and Development, Engagement and Participation, Strategic Planning and International Relations, Research, Sector Development and Precinct Development. They are supported by the Communications & Marketing, Information Technology, Human Resource & Administration and Finance departments. As of October 2017, top management of the council includes Ambassador-at-Large
Chan Heng Chee
Chan Heng Chee (; born 19 April 1942) is a Singaporean academic and diplomat who has been serving as Ambassador-at-Large at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs since 2012, Chairwoman of the National Arts Council and Member of the Presidential C ...
, Executive Director of
GK Goh Holdings Goh Yew Lin and Deputy Secretary of
Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth
The Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth (MCCY; ms, Kementerian Kebudayaan, Masyarakat dan Belia; ; ta, கலாசார, சமூக, இளையர்துறை அமைச்சு) is a ministry of the Government of Singapore ...
Rosa Huey Daniel.
Supporting the industry
Assistance schemes
The NAC provides funding infrastructure for Singapore's arts community. Each year, through its grants framework, the NAC aims to develop new and existing arts organisations, encourage production of, presentation of and participation in the arts, as well as provide training, research & development for market and audience development needs, both locally and internationally.
Arts spaces
NAC provides artists and arts groups with accessible performing venues for their productions, and to sustainable platforms where artists can collaborate with each other and interact with the wider public.
Community engagement
The NAC works with other agencies to bring arts to the wider public. Through initiatives such as Arts & Disability Forum, Arts In Your Neighbourhood, Art Reach, National Arts Council - Arts Education Programme (NAC-AEP), Noise Singapore, Patron of the Arts Awards, and Silver Arts.
Programmes
The NAC organises and supports a range of nationwide and international events to grow and showcase Singapore's artistic talents:
* Cultural Medallion and Young Artist Award
* Golden Point Award
* Got To Move
* Arts Weekend Civic District
* Music Competitions (National Indian Music Competition, National Chinese Music Competition, National Piano & Violin Competition)
* Singapore Art Week
* Singapore International Festival of Arts
* Singapore Writers Festival
Controversies
After artist
Josef Ng
Josef Ng Sing Chor (; born 1972) is a Singaporean former performance artist. He is known for his 1994 public performance ''Brother Cane'', at the end of which he partially exposed his buttocks and snipped his pubic hair. ''Brother Cane'' was repo ...
's 1994 performance ''Brother Cane'', in which he bared his buttocks and trimmed his pubic hair to protest media coverage of an anti-gay operation in 1992.
From 1994 to 2004, the NAC withdrew funding support for the scriptless art forms of performance art as well as forum theatre.
In 2000, the NAC objected to theatre group
Agni Kootthu's planned staging of
Elangovan Elangovan is a given name or surname, which may refer to:
*E. V. K. S. Elangovan (active 2004–2009), Indian politician
*G. Elangovan (active 1971–1977), Indian politician
*P.D. Elangovan (active 1999–2004), Indian politician
*T. K. S. Elangov ...
's play ''Talaq'', a one-woman show about an Indian Muslim woman's divorce, which had already been staged twice. They suggested that Agni Kootthu arrange a preview of the play for selected persons so that their recommendations would help the Public Entertainment Licence Unit (PELU) of the
Singapore Police Force
The Singapore Police Force (SPF) is the national and principal law enforcement agency responsible for the prevention of crime and law enforcement in the Republic of Singapore. It is the country's lead agency against organised crime; human, wea ...
to decide on the licence application. When PELU refused to grant a licence, the NAC supported the staging of the play subject to some changes being made. Agni Kootthu instead decided to hold an invitation-only rehearsal to document the play at the Drama Centre, which it had booked beforehand. NAC, as the Drama Centre's landlord, decided to close the Drama Centre on those days, resulting in a four-hour standoff when S. Thenmoli, president of Agni Kootthu, arrived. The then-Executive Director of NAC called the police and Thenmoli was arrested for alleged trespassing.
In the same year, the NAC withdrew funding of $8,000 from theatre group
Drama Box's staging of ''The VaginaLogue'', a one-woman show by
Li Xie
Li, li, or LI may refer to:
Businesses and organizations
* Landscape Institute, a British professional body for landscape architects
* Leadership Institute, a non-profit organization located in Arlington, Virginia, US, that teaches "political tec ...
, because the group's artistic director
Kok Heng Leun declined to take down a projected image of a vagina that was used as a backdrop. As a result, the group lost money on the production. Three years later, the NAC declined to fund Drama Box's re-staging of the same play.
In 2002, the NAC demanded that lines from
Alfian Sa'at's play ''Causeway'', staged by
Teater Ekamatra, be removed due to its supposed incitement of cross-strait and racial tensions.
In 2003, the NAC withdrew its funding of the journal ''FOCAS: Focus on Contemporary Art and Society Vol. 5: Second FRONT'' three days before it went to print. The suspected reason was playwright-poet
Alfian Sa'at's essays, “The Racist’s Apology”, about being an indigenous Malay in Singapore, and one on NAC's censorship in previous issues of the journal.
In 2006, the NAC informed an unnamed artist invited to the
Singapore Biennale The Singapore Biennale is a large-scale biennial contemporary art exhibition in Singapore, serving as the country’s major platform for international dialogue in contemporary art. It seeks to present and reflect the vigour of artistic practices in ...
that he would need a lawyer for his project, and that he would be held responsible if anything should go wrong in the project. He was also told that he would not receive further support unless he had engaged a lawyer which was not possible as a lawyer would have required half of the budget given. The proposed work had intended to interview 5 individuals who have been active in the arts scene in Singapore and the video recording would be presented as a 5-hour long screening during the Singapore Biennale 2006. The work was not completed and not presented at the Biennale.
In 2007, the NAC removed artist-writer
Jason Wee's essay, "Raising the Subject", from the catalogue for "Raised", an art festival that was part of the Singapore Art Show 2007 which thematically focused on migrant labor, reportedly because it included references to
Operation Spectrum
Operation Spectrum, also known as the 1987 " Marxist Conspiracy", was the code name for a covert security operation that took place in Singapore on 21 May 1987. Sixteen people were arrested and detained without trial under Singapore's Internal ...
.
In May 2010, the NAC cut the annual grant given to local theatre company
W!LD RICE
W!LD RICE, founded in 2000 by Ivan Heng, is a professional theatre company in Singapore. In 2019, the company established a permanent performance venue at Funan Mall.
History
The first show by W!LD RICE was held at Jubilee Hall in Raffles Hotel ...
. It got $170,000, down from $190,000 the year before. It is the lowest annual grant that the company has received from the council. Artistic director
Ivan Heng
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says the council told him funding was cut because its productions promoted so-called "alternative lifestyles", were critical of government policies, and satirised political leaders. Veteran theatre company
TheatreWorks also had its funding cut, from $310,000 to $280,000. Its artistic director
Ong Keng Sen
Ong Keng Sen (born 20 November 1963; ) is a Singaporean director of the theatre group TheatreWorks, which was founded in 1985.
Early life
Ong Keng Sen was youngest of six children born to immigrants from Putian, China. Ong joined the drama cl ...
was told that the company had to have more "local presence".
In early 2011, the NAC revoked its publishing grant for playwright
Chong Tze Chien
Chong may refer to:
* Chong (surname), the romanization of several Chinese and Korean surnames
* Chong or Pear people of Thailand and Cambodia
** Chong language
* Chong or Limbu people of eastern Nepal, Bhutan, and northeastern India
* ancient Chi ...
's book ''Four Plays'' as it included the controversial play ''Charged''.
In late 2011, following a private preview, the
Singapore Art Museum
The Singapore Art Museum (Abbreviation: SAM) is an art museum is located in the Downtown Core district of Singapore. It is the first fully dedicated contemporary visual arts museum in Singapore with one of the world’s most important public co ...
removed Japanese-British artist
Simon Fujiwara
Simon Fujiwara (born 10 September 1982 in Harrow, United Kingdom) is a British/Japanese artist.
His works range from paintings and photographs to installations, film and sculptures. They are shown all around the world, for example in the Tate Mo ...
’s work, ''Welcome to the Hotel Munber'' (2010), which featured homoerotic content, despite appropriate advisory notices put up by the museum and the
Singapore Biennale The Singapore Biennale is a large-scale biennial contemporary art exhibition in Singapore, serving as the country’s major platform for international dialogue in contemporary art. It seeks to present and reflect the vigour of artistic practices in ...
, organised by the NAC. This censorship was committed without any consultation with or notification of the artist.
In May 2015, it withdrew $8,000 worth of funding after it deemed that the best-selling graphic novel ''
The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye
''The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye'' is a graphic novel by Sonny Liew published in 2015 by Epigram Books and 2016 by Pantheon Books. It tells the story of Charlie Chan Hock Chye, a fictional cartoonist, from his early days in colonial life to ...
'' by
Sonny Liew
Sonny Liew (born 26 September 1974) is a Malaysia-born comic artist/illustrator based in Singapore. He is best known for '' The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye'' (2015), the first graphic novel to win the Singapore Literature Prize for fiction.
E ...
, which it had previously read in full in draft form and approved of, had "sensitive content" and the potential to "undermine the authority and legitimacy of the government". This led to a heated debate between artists and the council.
From November to December 2015, NAC was involved in a fracas with local artists and academics after its CEO
Kathy Lai
Kathy is a feminine given name. It is a pet form of Katherine, Kathleen and their related forms. Kathy may refer to:
In sports
*Kathy Bald, Canadian freestyle swimmer
* Kathy May, American tennis player
* Kathy Radzuweit, German volleyball playe ...
and Chairman
Chan Heng Chee
Chan Heng Chee (; born 19 April 1942) is a Singaporean academic and diplomat who has been serving as Ambassador-at-Large at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs since 2012, Chairwoman of the National Arts Council and Member of the Presidential C ...
argued for the need for and defended NAC's use of censorship. This prompted calls to boycott the NAC.
The NAC has also drawn criticisms for paying $410,000 in consultancy fees to undertake a study on a refuse collection centre for Victoria Theatre and
Victoria Concert Hall
The Victoria Theatre and Concert Hall is a performing arts centre in the Central Area of Singapore, situated along Empress Place. It is a complex of two buildings and a clock tower joined together by a common corridor; the oldest part of the ...
in 2016, when the eventual bin centre cost $470,000 to build. National Development Minister
Lawrence Wong
Lawrence Wong Shyun Tsai ( zh, c=黄循财, p=Huáng Xúncái; born 18 December 1972) is a Singaporean politician, economist and former civil servant who has been serving as Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore since 2022 alongside Heng Swee Keat ...
argued that an extensive study had to be done due to the location of the bin centre within the Civic District and that the project was "delivered satisfactorily and at an acceptable cost".
References
External links
National Arts Council SingaporeA page that showcase the murals in Singapore. Portal created by [http://www.socialcreatives.com Social Creatives NGO that does Community Art to make society colourful visually and emotionally
* [http://www.singaporewritersfestival.com/ Singapore Writers Festival">Social Creatives">A page that showcase the murals in Singapore. Portal created b
Social Creatives NGO that does Community Art to make society colourful visually and emotionally
* [http://www.singaporewritersfestival.com/ Singapore Writers Festival
* [http://www.noisesingapore.com/ Noise Singapore
* [http://www.singaporeartsfest.com/ Singapore Arts Festival">Noise Singapore">Social Creatives
NGO that does Community Art to make society colourful visually and emotionally
Singapore Writers FestivalNoise SingaporeSingapore Arts FestivalNational Arts Council - Arts Education Programme (NAC-AEP)
{{Authority control
1991 establishments in Singapore
Government agencies established in 1991
Statutory boards of the Singapore Government
Arts in Singapore