SINGAPORE - 2002 was an exciting year for the arts scene here, from the opening of Esplanade - Theatres on the Bay, Singapore's national performing arts centre, to the founding of several arts groups, institutes and businesses that have since stood the test of time.
The Straits Times looks at four of these - a theatre company, an independent bookstore, a print institute and an art band - to find out how they have kept going through the last two decades, including two years of the Covid-19 pandemic, and where they plan to head next.
Checkpoint Theatre's long labour of love
The theatre company's co-founders and joint artistic directors, Claire Wong and Huzir Sulaiman, met and fell in love in 2001 when Wong was cast in Huzir's hit satire Atomic Jaya.
Huzir, 48, recalls fondly that the late director Krishen Jit was their inadvertent matchmaker. "Krishen said, 'The playwright and the actress should go out to dinner together to understand each other's process.'"
Their relationship was sealed by their common passion for theatre.
Wardah Books turns a page to a new chapter
Three years into its existence, business at the independent Kampong Glam bookstore was so dire that its survival was in question.
Owner Ibrahim Tahir even entered talks to sell it. He found a buyer and settled on a price.
"I didn't realise till I'd left the meeting that tears were streaming down my face," says the 47-year-old. "I couldn't stop for hours. I realised the enormity of what I had done."
He called off the sale. "I knew on some visceral level that I could not let go of the bookstore. I needed it as much as it needed me."
From rocky start to the world's art stage
The Singapore Tyler Print Institute (STPI) officially opened in April 2002. But its namesake Kenneth Tyler, a highly respected print maker from the United States, reportedly left in a huff, after serving just three months as its founding director.
Ms Emi Eu, who joined STPI as a gallery director in June 2001, recalls that period of uncertainty. "There was speculation (STPI) wasn't going to last."
Today, the institute has just wrapped up another edition of its S.E.A. Focus art fair and is a contender on the world's art stage.
Blurring the boundaries between music and art
In the Singapore music scene, there has never been quite a band like experimental outfit The Observatory.
In the past two decades, the experimental outfit has trodden a path of its own, often blurring the boundaries between music and art.
What started out as an alternative rock band, comprising musicians who played with some of the seminal names from the 1990s home-grown indie music circle, has evolved into a significant player in the arts scene.
Their body of work is varied and wide, comprising more than a dozen albums, gigs worldwide, music festivals, online radio shows and interdisciplinary exhibitions.
