Giving Artists in Singapore the Platform to Share their Vision of Sustainability and Conscious Living
As panic hits Europe,
As stocks markets plunge amidst global recession fears,
As people stock up on toilet paper rolls and rice,
As all cultural, sporting and entertainment events with more than 250 participants are being cancelled,
Let us share about one of the amazing events that took place before COVID-19 spiked rates spiked in Europe. We feel very fortunate to have been asked to curate their Art, Theatre and Dance programming.
Our intention is to share how, in a volatile and uncertain context, festival goers, artists, performers, vendors, staff, adapted and embraced the Singapore government’s advice and were able to support creative expression and deep human experiences.
Once upon a time, Singapore held a little outdoor festival
Garden Beats festival is a seven year-old festival with the pugnacity and dream to further grow the enthusiasm for an outdoor, relaxed, friendly, fun and high quality explorative event in a country known for its big shows and its love for AC.
After five years of fruitful collaboration, this experiential and outdoor music festival invited me to curate their first ever ‘Theatre & Dance Pavilion and Art Lane,’ a movement to encourage Art and Conscious Living. This move was not supported by any branding sponsorship. It was supported solely by the founders’ strong vision and willingness to share - through art - the significance of music, sustainability and conscious living - with festival-goers.
In doing so, this year, Garden Beats became the first ever Art x Music x Conscious Living event in Singapore focusing on festival goers’ participation. It was not about simply watching and receiving, it was about fully participating and co-creating the immersive experience with artists and performers!
And we can tell you, getting to that point was not easy.
Hello, my name is Coronavirus and here is a taste of what I do to Businesses
As the Financial Times (FT) put it, “The loss of the China trade has hit south-east Asian economies particularly hard”. With a simple downfall, it has caused a domino effect that has especially impacted the creative & event industries.
Travel Industry (a decrease in flights, travel for leisure)
To put it simply: people have pulled the plug on their holidays. The incredible images of the before and after from The Guardian speaks for itself. Singapore, which ranks 5th on Global Destination Cities Index, behind Bangkok, London, Paris and Dubai, has been hit hard. Changi Airport with its strategic location in the middle of Southeast Asia and its reputation of being efficient is now comparatively empty as to what it was before.
Manufacturing and Shipping Industry
Chinese suppliers have stopped delivering to manufacturers. “Imports of everything from Thai and Malaysian electronic equipment to Vietnamese dragon fruit grind to a halt,” reports FT.
Singapore is the second largest port in the world in terms of volume. Its shipping and trading industry, is one of the most active in the world. With a very integrated Chinese economy, the impact of the coronavirus in China has led to the slow down in intercontinental trade, bulk transport of raw materials, and import/export of affordable food and manufactured goods.
Event industry
I estimate that more than 80% of events, team building, real life training have been cancelled or postponed in the Garden City. Some newspapers even played a game to list all cancelled major events.
As Asia's Top Convention City for 11 consecutive years, the impact on events organisers is massive.
People’s Collaboration and Creativity
More SMEs and startups businesses are impacted too. In their recent survey, Tech In Asia found that the Coronavirus is affecting 8 out of 10 startup businesses and amongst them, 3 in 10 responded they are severely and heavily affected.
One aspect we particularly feel is the slow down in companies investing in their people. We specialise in creative activation - team building through art, large scale facilitation to foster creativity, design thinking training - and many of our projects have been postponed.
And we could go on like that for the next 6 months. And the only thing that it will give us, is stress.
Garden Beats Festival 2020!
We won’t go into the details of the financial, logistic and brand nightmares. We also won’t share details on how performers dropped out (we understood where they were coming from).
What we want to talk about is the many performers and artists who stuck with the festival and complied with the health requirements. We want to talk about the festival goers who came because they recognised the effort and investment to create perhaps the best edition of the festival while adhering to advice from the Singapore Government for holding an event. We want to talk about the waves of love we received from the community, the artists and the press afterwards: here and here and here!
One aspect We would particularly like to share about is the Art Lane and the Theatre & Dance Pavilion that I curated and why it was, for us, significant for Singapore's creative industry.
Four hours, 24 performers, 11 acts shared - through art - about sustainability and conscious living. Here I present a breakdown:
We create a platform for 3 completely new collaborations. Garden Beats is establishing itself as visionary festival and you cannot be a visionary if you repeat what you have already done! Performers jumped with me on the running train! We would like to celebrate the collaboration between @Daniel's Water Dance, @Gary and @Jens (steel drums musicians), @Nashwa and @Dance To Bliss with us (as painter) as well as @Inch Chua (field recording and singer musician) and @Andy Yang (musician).
2 complete revisions of “East and West Standards”. Conscious living for me is about awareness and breaking down old perspectives. Two acts I’d like to highlight for the fresh perspective are @M Drako, who reinvents Western metal hardcore songs with the violin, and @Darren Ho & The Mirage, who tells the story of the heart sutra with belly dance.
3 art installation artists: Planting the Environment Flag in the form of Foams and Debris Table. Created by artist @Ernest Goh, the Ayer Ayer Project installation serves up ocean micro-plastics for ‘consumption’. The shape of this sushi table mimics the Malaysia-Singapore coastline from which the sand was collected from. The artist invites participants to join him in the impossible task of removing micro-plastic fragments one piece at a time. This participatory artwork brings the issue of massive plastic pollution right to the dining table where studies have shown micro-plastics are entering our food chain through the food we eat and the water we drink.
100 % of the art installations were reusable
This is a BIG WIN. Contrary to the usual practice where the lack of space, or rather lack of affordable storage space, leads artists to destroy their creations, all the pieces will be re-used.
2 first-time young Singaporean artists showcased: @Sam, an art installation artist, and @Nas, a dancer
7 Acts and installations focused on Public Co-creation
One of my specialties is community co-creation! So for the festival I was proud to showcase participatory pieces - from a Salsa workshop with @ACTFA to a breathing and sound exercise with @Daniel, a self-painting presentation with @My Heart On Me, and a furry dance in a white fabric void with @Dance To Bliss, these are some of the few co-creations I curated! #SAYYESTOCOCREATION
A Time for Creative Industries to Shine?
In many ways, I feel like there is an abundance of things to learn from this festival. We as a community can champion a better, healthier planet by - pursuing our local network, adapting a mentality of constant change, adopting creativity as a movement for awareness, and most importantly, implementing the conclusion that is the most applicable now - elevating creativity so that it reinvents our practices and pursuits towards a more conducive, feasible environment, amidst the chaos.
I leave you with three of our most explorative performers: @Ellen Bryant, @Independent Archive and @Neo Jialing.
