Bedok festival show, activities with Ubin villagers among projects supported by $40,000 AGEncy fund
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In The Middle Of The Water is a promenade theatre work on Pulau Ubin written by Kok Heng Leun. The AGEncy fund will support another work by Kok at Pulau Ubin.
PHOTO: NICOLE CHAI
- T:>Works launched the AGEncy fund to support arts projects by people aged 60 and above.
- Projects include a Bedok community festival addressing grief, a dance film with Pulau Ubin villagers, and an immersive space inspired by autism and a greyhound.
- There were 30 applicants for the inaugural fund.
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SINGAPORE – A Bedok community festival performance; a dance film with villagers on Pulau Ubin; and an immersive experience featuring a dog and a woman with autism. These are just some of the exciting projects supported by a new fund given out by theatre and arts company T:>Works.
The inaugural AGEncy fund, launched in 2025, is earmarked for arts projects pitched by those who are 60 years old and above, with T:>Works trying to correct the overemphasis on young and emerging artists.
Its first six recipients were announced on Aug 5, with the six projects slated to receive a total of $40,000. Their works-in-progress will be presented at T:>Works AGEncy Day in 2027, on a date to be confirmed.
Mother-and-daughter duo Ajuntha Anwari and actress Sharda Harrison will get $8,000 to develop three workshops. Participants will learn to make food and natural remedies while exchanging stories on the passing down of heritage from mother to daughter.
Arts producer Audrey Perera and actor Remesh Panicker will receive $7,500 to support their creation of the main performance for the first Bedok community festival.
The event, to be held at Common Ground in the Bedok town centre on Oct 31 and Nov 1, was inspired by a support group that helped people process grief. If successful, it could be replicated in other neighbourhoods.
Rites Of Us will use theatre and music to help create a space where people can safely talk about love, death and loss.
Perera says: “We envision an intimate- to mid-sized experience that feels thoughtful, respectful, accessible and deeply connected to community life.”
There is also a multicultural element to address the gap in communities’ understanding of one another’s end-of-life and mourning rituals.
“These gaps matter most at the moments of greatest human vulnerability: When someone we love dies, or we suffer a deep loss, the people around us do not know how to show up,” adds Perera.
Film-maker K. Rajagopal will get $9,000 to create a film revisiting his 1990s project on sleep and mental wellness, as well as other components of what will be a multimedia installation. He will act for the first time in 15 years, as a lonely insomniac.
The Night Watch is based on his own difficulties falling asleep. He says it will also involve painting and photography that interact with a nocturnal soundscape.
The project has existential stakes. On why he is returning to acting, Rajagopal says: “It is also an opportunity for me to find what I am searching for at this point in my life.”
His project will include an intergenerational mentoring process for young film-makers.
Artist and researcher Dawn-Joy Leong will receive $6,500 to create an immersive space that will include film, audio, scent and objects people can touch. The project is related to the artist’s late diagnosis of autism and a greyhound named Lucy.
Theatre company Drama Box founder Kok Heng Leun, dancer Chew Shaw En and Pulau Ubin villagers are awarded $5,000 to support village community events and to get villagers to partake in activities on a newly cleared piece of land that will be documented in film.
Community builders Natalia Tan and Marcus Lam, with musician Ernesto Valerio, a regular feature in Singapore’s bar scene, will get $4,000 to create a Valerio documentary and a live performance, an idea that came to the applicants after Valerio joined an open jam with musicians half his age.
The competitive field of local and international applicants was whittled down by an esteemed panel full of Cultural Medallion recipients, including T:>Works artistic director Ong Keng Sen, artist Amanda Heng, jazz musician Jeremy Monteiro, writer Meira Chand and dancer Som Said.
In launching the fund in 2025, Ong said that artists above 60 were often passed over but still had much to give, with unique concerns that would be left out if only young, emerging artists were given institutional support.
He says on Aug 5: “We received a strong pool of applications. The open call deepens and broadens our community engagement. It cuts across silos of art forms and generations.”
The fund recently supported 73-year-old Dana Lam’s first solo exhibition Who Knows Where The Bird Goes, which is on at T:>Works’ space in Mohamed Sultan Road until Aug 8.