The National Arts Council (NAC) thanks Mr Colin Lim for his views (Rework Cultural Medallion, establish proper art archive, Oct 22).
While half of all Cultural Medallion (CM) recipients have tapped the CM Fund, many are supported through NAC's other grant schemes.
The council has also made improvements over the years while ensuring prudent stewardship of public funds.
In 2006, the fund was increased from $50,000 to $80,000, and in 2011, application processes were simplified, allowing CM recipients to submit proposals any time on single or multiple projects.
The NAC agrees with Mr Lim that archiving of Singapore arts and culture is critical.
Here, our partner agencies, cultural institutions and arts community play an important part.
Esplanade - Theatres on the Bay recently launched Offstage, a multimedia microsite offering new content about the performing arts in Singapore and Asia.
It also features repurposed content drawn from its 17-year-old archive of performance video clips and documents biographies of nearly 200 Singapore arts and cultural pioneers.
For the visual arts, the National Gallery Singapore's rich archive presents 20,000 physical and digital items of rare publications, exhibition catalogues and ephemera.
The collection has grown in importance and scope, through donations and partnerships with prominent artists and estates of South-east Asian modern art pioneers, such as CM recipient Georgette Chen and Lim Hak Tai.
The National Library Board's (NLB's) National Online Repository of the Arts contains digitised works across various art forms, alongside archival photographs, manuscripts, scores and oral history interviews.
Representative works and the artistic journeys of many individuals and organisations from the arts sector are available online.
Roots.sg, by the National Heritage Board (NHB), is another good resource which offers content from Singapore's national collection and our cultural heritage.
NAC will continue to work closely with NLB and NHB to enhance these central repositories.
The council has also supported documentation initiatives of Singaporean artists and arts groups such as Nam Hwa Opera's documentation of Teochew opera in Singapore and The Forefathers Project by Teng Ensemble.
Among the CM recipients, artists Chua Mia Tee and Milenko Prvacki, musicians Nona Asiah and Iskandar Ismail have tapped their funds to share with the public their artistic practice.
There are also artists and arts groups who document their arts practice independently, and we encourage more of such grounds-up initiatives.
Grace Ng
Director, Education and Development
National Arts Council
