new art worker

I joined the Ministry of Culture in 1981 as Assistant Director (Culture).  My colleague, the late Sng Boh Khim and I reported to Deputy Secretary Lee Wai Kok and through him, to Permanent Secretary Cheng Tong Fatt. Sng was a class-mate from the University of Singapore and a published poet.  He had a genuine passion for the arts and I always felt it a pity that he left the Ministry frustrated by the bureaucracy and meagre resources.

The Ministry of Culture was then housed on the third level of City Hall on Connaught Drive.  This historic building holds many good memories for me as I was also housed on its second floor during my three-year stint in the Ministry of Communications before we moved to the PSA Building. Later, the building featured again in my career when we advocated its conversion into a constitutional history museum.  It is now being developed into the National Art Gallery (NAG) alongside the Supreme Court which once housed the Public Service Commission through which we all passed, for job and promotion interviews.

By the time I joined Ministry of Culture, many arts promotion measures were already entrenched, thanks to the late President Ong Teng Cheong when he was Minister for Culture.  The Ministry staged an unprecedented rich annual calendar of festivals and exhibitions including the annual Dance Festival, Drama Festival, Festival of Chinese Instrumental Music, Festival of Choirs, National Music Competition, National Day Art Exhibition, National Day Photographic Exhibition, Patron of the Arts Ceremony and Cultural Medallion Ceremony.  We also organised a regular Music for Everyone series many with artists contributed by the British Council,  Goethe Institute and USIS. 

I managed the music and visual arts programmes and the secretariat of the Singapore Cultural Foundation.   Assisting me with the music portfolio was Mrs Lim Mee Lian a Nantah graduate who later became NAC’s Deputy Director (Grants) and has just retired as Company Manager for Tang Quartet.  Our modest addition to the calendar was the Singapore International Jazz Festival.  We also had the privilege of being part of the team that elevated the Singapore International Festival of Arts to international stature in 1982.

In my humble opinion, the late President Ong Teng  Cheong made a huge difference to arts development in Singapore and propelled it to greater heights. As Minister for Culture, he put all the essential elements in place, setting up the Singapore Cultural Foundation, an endowment fund to raise funds for the arts, the Cultural Medallion and Patron of the Arts award to motivate artists and art patrons and seven  advisory committees for dance, drama, choral music, instrumental music, literature, photographic art and visual arts. 

 Mr Ong’s passion for the arts was manifest through his many official roles from Minister for Culture, Secretary-General of NTUC and later Elected President of Singapore.  He set up the NTUC Cultural wing and radio station and later steered the development of our performing arts centre, The Esplanade.

from “organizer” to “arts administrator”

The Straits Times article “Wanted: More leaders in the arts industry” (2 Aug 09), prompts me to reflect on how far we have come.  In two respects;  first, how the term “arts administrator” rolls off the media tongue with such fluency; and second, that there is actually public concern about the dearth of arts administrators.

In the early 1980s, staff in the Cultural Affairs Division were designated “Organiser”. There were five organisers including Lim Mee Lian who was Organizer (Music) and Chua Ai Liang, the Organizer (Drama).

The very first Arts Administration courses in Singapore were held from 14 to 30 Aug 85.  They were conducted by Harmon Greenblatt and Irene Conley from the Department of Arts, Entertainment and Media Management, Columbia College, Chicago, Illinois which was reputed to have the largest arts administration programme in the United States at the time.

Thank You note from Harmon & Irene

Two three-week courses were conducted concurrently, in the afternoons for staff from the public sector including the Ministry of Community Development, National Theatre Trust, SSO, SBC and STPB; and in the evenings for staff from the arts groups, art schools and arts entertainment agencies. Course content was wisely worked around a list of topics offered by the participants to ensure relevancy to their situations; and included topics like the formulation of arts policy, arts marketing & ticket pricing, fund-raising, programming and production.

Apart from taking comfort in the realisation that their funding problems were universal in nature and the chance to form new alliances within the local arts community, participants came away with a sense of belonging to a global community of professional arts administrators.  We celebrated when a month or so after the courses, the media began to use the term “arts administrator” and ”arts manager” instead of “organiser”.

I have always wondered what makes a good arts administrator.  Must one be an arts practitioner?  Would artists make good arts administrators? Is a little arts knowledge a good or bad thing? Must one be a good entrepreneur or marketer? Must one be creative? Must one have worked in “grassroot” organizations? What about the gift of the gab? and do strong networks and connections count?

INMO, first, a good arts administrator must love the arts to bits, not do the job because of the glamour it attracts. After all, the glamour is simply a spin we devised to attract glamorous brands to become sponsors. Second, they must truly and wholeheartedly aspire for ordinary persons to express themselves aesthetically or experience artistry daily, not only on entering an artifice called a “theatre”.  It is not about making available or ”imposing” on the man-in-the-street, types of arts that the arts administrators themselves favour especially if he or she is still Eurocentric in outlook.  Third, they need to balance artistic and business considerations in ingenious ways, which may necessitate sacrificing high salaries as every dollar going to salaries is one less for artistic pursuits.

On the one hand, I believe that artists and arts administrators must be paid a respectable salary for the important work they are doing – defining a society’s identity and what Minister George Yeo beautifully described as “edifying the human spirit”.  On the other hand, a good salary cannot be the chief motivator for arts administration as a choice of career.  This is a paradox that reminds me that when Brother McNally beckoned me to La Salle College of the Arts in 1997 (when we met at the ACM opening after I had just joined Singapore Pools) offering to pay me anything I wanted, I replied that I knew La Salle could not afford a salary for a single mother supporting two school-going children and that if I accepted his offer of a large salary, it would negate my passion / sense of nobility in accepting the job.

Leading lights Alvin Tan (TNS), Chong Tze Chien (Finger Players), Ekachai (Action Theatre), Ivan Heng (W!ld Rice), Ong Ken Sen & Tay Tong (TheatreWorks) and Ruby Lim-Yang (Act 3) are quite amazing and I watch them with great admiration. Not only do these arts practitioners love the arts to bits, they sacrificed more lucrative alternative careers for their passion and after so many years, continue to produce oeuvres of works that aptly capture the Singapore spirit.  To top it off, the companies they lead have built and managed their modest reserves and cash-flow to allow their companies the financial security to plan productions 2-3 years ahead.

So I say, “There are brilliant arts administrators aplenty in Singapore”.  This may suggest that it is unnecessary to import “talents” from outside the arts industry or overseas but then again, perhaps, it’s  best we leave them be in the arts community to do the real and more important work that arts policy makers  are supposed to create the enabling conditions for.   Just give them a bigger say on arts policy and developmental strategies which should benefit from the freshness of their years of experience.

people’s association cultural troupe – professional or not??

It was not uncommon in the early 1980s, for performing artists to decry the lack of Government support for the arts and hence, the absence of “professional” art companies.  These were the days before the flourishing of art companies like TheatreWorks and the Singapore Dance Theatre

At the time, in fact, two public service organizations were already operating  professional art companies, with artists who were salaried to practice and perform their arts on a full-time  basis.  Radio & Television Singapore had a radio orchestra while PA operated a Cultural Troupe. This was in addition to the Singapore Symphony Orchestra which was established in 1978.

 

Started in the 1960s, nearly two decades before I joined, the PA Cultural Troupe had been established in a newly-independent nation, to entertain the masses, perform at National Day Parades and at the Istana during state visits by overseas dignitaries.

 

The Troupe comprised eight companies – Bagpipers, Modern Dance Company (choreographed by Seow Yoke Beng, Christina Tan and Emily Hogan); Chinese Drama Company, Malay and Indian Dance troupes, Military Band conducted by Lim Tiap Seng and the Chinese Orchestra conducted by Lim Tiap Guan who was later succeeded by Ku Lap Man. The PA Chinese Orchestra was second only to Hong Kong’s Chinese Orchestra and has since evolved into the highly-acclaimed Singapore Chinese Orchestra.  In 1980, Douglas initiated a Children’s Choir under conductor Monica Toh.

 

 

Christmas Rhapsody leaflet

Christmas Rhapsody Calendar

The Troupe was fully engaged around the year, performing quarterly road shows on fields in the HDB estates including the annual Christmas Rhapsody.  To celebrate the 25^th anniversary of PA, the Troupe mounted a dance-drama “Temasek in Dance” on the history of Singapore.

Temasek in Dance Programme

 

The PA Culture Section also spearheaded the mid-autumn Lantern Competition.  Hundreds of beautiful and well-crafted lanterns of surprising designs and materials hung on the PA field ready to be judged. Judges included the late Chinese ink artist Huang Pao Fang and art expressionist Jaffar Latiff who favoured the more innovative designs. Some entrants injected multicultural influences in their lanterns while other entrants used mechanical parts, pointing the way to a more tech-savvy society. 

 PA gave me my first taste of arts management.  As Assistant Director (Programmes), I had the chance to dabble in stage management, choreography, stage design, costume design and other aspects of stage production. I may not have made good creative decisions but the job forced me into a leadership position on artistic matters. It was also my first encounter with theatre director Roger Jenkins whom helped the dancers express themselves more dramatically in “Temasek in Dance”. He was then teaching at the United World College and proved to be an inspiring and effective teacher, despite the language and cultural barrier.  I also met Goh Soo Khim, Ruby Chuah and Sylvia McCully at a discussion I chaired on matters relating to dance. Soo Khim told me recently that she remembers that session well as it was the first time she met me.

  

I wonder if artists had disregarded PACT as a professional art company because it was engaged in “community arts” rather than the “high arts”.  However, it is all the same to me as I wander more and more, out of the world of “arts for arts’ sake” back into the sphere of “arts for humanity”.   

 

 

Temasek in Dance