Singapore hopes to be a creative node for South-east Asia: President Tharman

SINGAPORE – Singapore wants to be a place where South-east Asian artists can meet, experiment and create works – a “node” that will encourage the coming together of diverse regional traditions, President Tharman Shanmugaratnam said.

Mr Tharman expressed his ambition for Singapore to be a host for regional arts exchanges at the Singtel Waterfront Theatre on May 19, during the opening of the 2026 mid-year congress of the International Society for the Performing Arts (ISPA).

He also encouraged artists to apply for the new $20 million Multicultural Arts Programme Grant, meant to spur the creation of multicultural works. The grant was first set out in March during the Budget debates, and opens for applications on July 15.

The ISPA conference is attended by over 500 performing arts leaders from more than 125 cities around the world, comprising four full days of talks, performances and networking sessions.

To local and foreign arts practitioners, Mr Tharman said Singapore is making sure its multiculturalism is developed actively and creatively.

He noted that globally, there is a steady corrosion of trust in many societies, with people becoming more divided along lines of ethnicity, culture, beliefs, educational status and socio-economic circumstances. Multiculturalism is in retreat in large parts of the world.

There is no quick fix for this loss of trust, he added, noting that what is required is a reimagining of multiculturalism and recognising that it can be sustained only by “acts of will”.

“No nation can any more claim to be effortlessly multicultural,” he said. What is needed are “active national and community strategies, robust civic networks, and determined efforts by teachers, starting from pre-schools, community and religious leaders, employers and artists, among others”.

The arts, he added, “allow us to encounter one another not as categories, but as people – with histories, emotions, aspirations, and different ways of seeing the world”.

Mr Tharman noted that multiculturalism has been core to Singapore’s identity as a nation, advanced through three distinct spaces.

The first is each community’s cultural and religious space – its language, faith, rituals and memories, where they draw emotional assurance and a sense of rootedness. The second is the common space in schools, mixed housing estates and workplaces – a secular, neutral ground where Singaporeans meet as equals, regardless of ethnicity or creed, and which the state has been “deliberate, even strict at times, in keeping”.

It is the third space that Singapore is now developing most actively and creatively, he said. “It is where cultures and artists meet, borrow from each other, and reshape their own practices. It is where we spur the development of new rhythms and forms in the creative arts, within and across each of our traditions, in a distinctly Singaporean context.”

This space, he added, includes artists who cross over to a culture other than their own and attempt to master its intricacies.

“We cannot force the evolution of this third space, or curate multiculturalism to match a fixed template. It will have to grow naturally, to its own beat. But it is precisely that organic evolution, that respects the role of artists, their imagination, their experimentation, their engagements with each other... that assures multiculturalism of its authenticity,” he said.

“What will emerge in time will, I am sure, be a more confident sense of shared identity in Singapore.”

The Multicultural Arts Programme Grant is seeded jointly by the President’s Challenge and the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth.

Under the scheme, artists can apply for up to $500,000 for the creation and staging of works drawing from Singapore’s multicultural traditions and identity, including for collaborations with South-east Asian partners.

The grant also supports initiatives aimed at strengthening the multicultural arts ecosystem. For those developing platforms like fellowships, conferences, research and documentation projects and youth mentorship programmes, funding of up to $300,000 is available as long as these are completed within 18 months.

Mr Tharman’s hope that Singapore can be a “node” for intra-regional creative exchange expands on official ambitions to make the country an arts hub. The arts hub idea usually positions the Republic as a gateway for the rest of the world to access South-east Asia.

Wild Rice founding artistic director Ivan Heng hoped that the Multicultural Arts Programme Grant would not be limited to just traditional art forms, but would also apply to contemporary works that are in his company’s wheelhouse: “We need space for difficult, diverse and deeply Singaporean stories to be told. Contemporary works also foster empathy, understanding and conversation between communities.”

Mr Subramanian Ganesh, founder of Tamil theatre company Agam Theatre Lab, said the President’s speech recognised that the arts were not just entertainment: “I appreciate the idea that investing in artists is part of investing in multiculturalism. Culture cannot live only in textbooks or policies: It must be experienced, felt, spoken, sung and performed.”

This is the second time Singapore has hosted the ISPA conference after the itinerant conference first came here in 2003. Thailand was the last South-east Asian country selected for the event 20 years ago in 2006.

The National Arts Council is the host of the event timed to coincide with the Singapore International Festival of Arts, a curation of Singapore and overseas performances that foreign guests are likely to attend.

During a special pitching session on May 21, three Singapore projects will also get an exclusive opportunity to pitch their works to global presenters and programmers. They are T.H.E Dance Company’s Strangely Familiar, on at the Singapore International Festival of Arts at Victoria Theatre from May 22 to 24; One Day We’ll Understand by artist Sim Chiyin about her grandfather’s involvement in the Malayan Emergency, which won Best Multimedia at The Straits Times Life Theatre Awards in 2025; and Esplanade co-production A Drop In The Ocean, an immersive ocean experience designed for those aged three to 15 months.