Heartbeats & Headlines: ST’s 180-year legacy comes to life in immersive exhibition

SINGAPORE – Try your hand at laying out a newspaper front page. Follow a graphic novel-style retelling of newsroom history. Compare scenes of old Singapore with how these places look now.

These are some of the interactive features of Heartbeats And Headlines: 180 Years Of Telling The Singapore Story, an exhibition by The Straits Times to mark its 180th anniversary in 2025. 

It traces ST’s journey from a colonial newspaper serving a largely merchant class, to a national broadsheet chronicling a nation’s most pivotal moments, to becoming the multi-platform media outlet that it is today. 

Beginning this weekend at the South Gateway Garden of Jewel Changi Airport, where it will run till July 20, the travelling exhibition will move to Westgate from July 25 to Aug 3, and to Raffles City Shopping Centre from Aug 8 to 17.

“The history and significance of ST sometimes can get overlooked in the day-to-day reporting and the faster and more relentless evolution of the newsroom itself,” said ST editor Jaime Ho. 

“But to look through the lens of what we’ve covered, and how we’ve covered it, we can see how we have evolved just as much as and together with Singapore.”

The exhibition also reflects how much of what ST does today is to appeal to a younger audience, while offering a newspaper people can still touch and feel, albeit in slightly different ways, Mr Ho added. 

Features editor Wong Kim Hoh, who curated the exhibition, said it was designed as an immersive multimedia experience, with the content kept bite-size and easy to digest. “It highlights how the publication has adapted to changing times, embracing new media and technologies while staying true to its core purpose of informing and engaging the public,” he said. 

One section highlights readers’ fondest memories of ST, and the lives of those transformed after being featured in its pages.

“Telling human stories is what ST does best,” said Mr Wong. “We wanted to spotlight the people whose hopes, dreams and lives we’ve had the privilege to chronicle.”

Months in the making, the exhibition was a true team effort, bringing together illustrators, interactive designers, photographers, video producers, journalists and the ST Events team.

“Through this, we hope visitors will experience the creative energy that goes into producing compelling news content every day,” Mr Wong said. 

Spread across five sections, the exhibition takes visitors on a journey through ST’s evolving newsroom, pivotal moments in Singapore’s history, its role as a newspaper of record and how it has kept pace in the digital age.

Interactive touchpoints interspersed between the panels allow visitors to flip through 180 years of ST front pages and try picking the day’s top stories.

Visitors can also browse a digital version of the very first issue of ST, then called The Straits Times and Singapore Journal of Commerce. The fragile original dated July 15, 1845 – now too delicate to display – is preserved in a climate-controlled vault at the National Library Building.

Children can join the fun too, with a Reporter-In-Training quest packed with child-friendly activities designed for them.

Exhibition sponsors include the Ministry of Home Affairs, Singapore Pools, Singtel, Temasek and UOB.