Your Royal Highness

Distinguished IFACCA members and Guests

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It gives me great pleasure to be here today at the opening dinner of the 2^nd World Summit on the Arts and Culture. I understand that the Summit delegates come from over 40 countries representing arts agencies from Asia, Africa, Europe, the Americas and the Caribbean. This good response is indeed very encouraging. To all visiting delegates, I bid you a warm welcome and an enjoyable and rewarding stay in Singapore.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Singapore, we are a relatively young country with 38 years of nationhood. Earlier in our nation’s history, we were more preoccupied with bread and butter issues rather than the softer side of development represented by the arts and culture. This situation is changing now.

In the last decade or so, Singapore has invested heavily in our social institutions to add diversity and depth to the arts and culture. Government has provided major grants to develop the infrastructure to support a more vibrant and exciting arts and cultural scene. For instance, this building where we are tonight, the Asian Civilisations Museum, was only opened in February this year after a six-year refurbishment at a cost of $82 million. We have recent closed the (century old) Singapore History Museum for a major restoration. When completed in 2006 it will become the largest museum in Singapore with a floor area of 18,000 square metres. At the waterfront, you will find the captivating and sometimes controversial Esplanade, our latest addition to a network of performing art venues. Costing $600 million, the Esplanade took ten years to complete from conception to construction. Since its October opening last year it has provided Singapore with a world-class performing arts venue for both local and international artistic talents. It has also become an icon for Singapore.

These are examples of major hardware development in support of arts and culture. But we are fully appreciative of the fact that more hardwares do not automatically translate into vibrant and creative arts and cultural activities. We need to nurture a corresponding growth in software, namely encourage the growth of more artistes in the different fields of expression. As Singapore is in the heart of Asia with its myriad religious, linguistic and social influences, we inherit an instinctive sensitivity for a multicultural perspective. This has become a defining characteristic of the arts in Singapore. The depth and width of Asian cultural capital is a fertile resource for Singapore artists to deploy, often incorporating hi-tech elements in innovative fusion of the traditional with the new. Some of our artistes have attempted ground breaking cultural fusion which have been well received when performed overseas. For example theatre director Ong Ken Sen of Theatreworks staged his poetic and cross-cultural The Global Soul: the Buddha Project to acclaim and sold out audiences in Berlin, Zurich and Rotterdam. Inspired by the life of Guatama Buddha and the travel writings of Pico Iyer, this exquisite piece combined the thousand-year-old Liyuan opera with Korean court songs, Thai dance and contemporary Japanese electronic music into a multicultural meditation on traveling. Currently another Singaporean theatre director Goh Boon Teck of Toy Factory Theatre Ensemble is taking his pan-Asian production of PRISM around ASEAN following its performances in Japan and Singapore. Commissioned by the Kageboushi Theatre Company in Japan as part of the ASEAN-Japan Year of Exchange 2003, Goh Boon Teck has through this production, provided a platform to showcase some of the most dynamic young artistic talent from the ASEAN countries to the Asian stage.

The Singapore Chinese Orchestra which will perform for this distinguished gathering later this evening, is also striving to interpret traditional Chinese music with modern elements to create a unique musical experience for its audiences. Formed seven years ago, the Orchestra has proven to be successful in achieving this cross-over and regularly performs to enthusiastic audiences at home. At this year’s Singapore Arts Festival, the orchestra collaborated with artist Tan Swie Hian and video artist Casey Lim to create the world’s first multimedia Chinese orchestral concerto. There are plans for the Orchestra to take the production to the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe.

The nurturing of more artistic talents will take time. Perhaps even more time than it takes than to build museums and concert halls. But this is an endeavour that we are committed to in order to ensure that the arts and culture in Singapore will always be able to stimulate, educate and anchor our people in this fast changing world. Nurturing a dynamic arts and cultural sector is also important because it is the artistic core of the creative cluster. Without the arts and culture, there can be no creative industry. For example, the visual arts is a fundamental skill for designers, just like a firm grounding in Asian aesthetics gives inspiration to our film makers. The creative industry cluster is an important new area of growth for Singapore. A recent study conducted by the Ministry of Trade and Industry in 2003 revealed that the creative industry cluster contributed $3.86 billion or 2.4% to the GDP for the year 2000. A recent study by the Economic Review Committee-Subcommittee on Service Industries has projected that the creative industry cluster has the potential to contribute up to 6% of GDP by 2012. In order to grow the creative industry cluster, we need a growing community of creative people who are fully connected to the world of arts and who can use their artistry and innovations as important competitive tools to tap new business opportunities.

The challenge for the NAC will be to leverage on the opportunities opened up by the increasing international curiosity Asian arts. That this is taking place in the midst of global economic and political uncertainties makes Singapore’s participation in the IFACCA network even more significant.

Arts agencies world-wide are being called upon, or sometimes even forced, to re-evaluate their purpose and programmes in the face of competing priorities among national and local governments. In many places, arts funding is being reduced or in the worse case scenario, eliminated entirely. One consequence of this is that the role of business in supporting the arts is increasing in importance. Both arts agencies and artists are looking at innovative ways in which business and art not only happily co-exist, but even mutually support each other.

As the first global network of national arts funding bodies, our involvement in IFACCA connects us to our partners in the international arts world. Collectively, through the IFACCA network, each arts agency can access a wider pool of expertise and experiences than any one agency can muster on its own.

In this respect, I am heartened to learn that the National Arts Council is proposing the formation of an Asian Chapter within IFACCA that would provide a more focused platform for collaboration within this Asian region. It will also provide a platform for Asia to engage the well-established arts networks in other parts of the world. I understand that eight Asian agencies have agreed to meet on the last day of this Summit to explore how to take this idea forward.

Finally it is my hope that this World Summit will see the beginning of a vibrant new era for IFACCA.

Ladies and gentlemen, I wish you all a pleasant dinner and a wonderful experience here in Singapore. Thank you.