New apprenticeships among arts offerings beyond SG Culture Pass

SINGAPORE – New apprenticeships and a scholarship for the arts sector are among initiatives unveiled on Feb 21 at a ministerial town hall.

Another initiative is the expansion of the National Arts Council’s (NAC) Arts Education Programme to all pre-schools registered with the Early Childhood Development Agency (ECDA).

Minister for Culture, Community and Youth Edwin Tong made these announcements at a town hall held at the Singtel Waterfront Theatre, where he also provided details of

the $100 Culture Pass for Singapore citizens aged 18 and above

.

He also said Singapore’s per capita spending on the arts and heritage has increased fourfold between 2005 and 2023. Here is a preview of what students, self-employed arts workers as well as arts and heritage groups can look forward to.

Ramped up arts education and exposure for pre-schoolers and students

By 2027, every pre-schooler and lower secondary school student will get a chance to learn through arts-based programmes. Mr Tong shared these targets on Feb 21.

NAC’s Arts Education Programme, which reached 34,000 pre-schoolers in 2024, will be expanded to all pre-schools registered with ECDA, reaching an estimated 44,000 students by 2027. Programmes include performances, excursions and workshops across six art forms.

Every secondary school will come under the Performing Arts-Based Learning programme co-developed with the Ministry of Education. The target is to have all lower secondary students attend a professional live music performance by 2027. In 2024, around three in 10 lower secondary students did so.

Students who need financial support in their pre-tertiary or diploma-level arts education will be eligible for a new NAC Creative Arts Scholarship. It is open to students enrolling in the School of the Arts, Singapore; Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts; and Lasalle College of the Arts.

New apprenticeships and attachments for self-employed arts workers

From 2025, self-employed individuals working in the arts can apply for new apprenticeships and attachments launched by the NAC. The programmes will focus on the “in-demand areas” of arts education, stage and production management and coordination, as well as technical theatre for live performances.

Theatremaker Chong Tze Chien,

who has been appointed

the next director of the Singapore International Festival of Arts

, said the scheme will help in plugging a technical skills gap in the local industry. Artists and content creators have “fast-tracked” to regional and international standards in the past decades, “but I think a lot of our technical staff, a lot of our stage managers and support system haven’t been getting enough resources to grow in tandem”, he added.

Mr Hoo Kuan Cien, who is in the organising team of the Producers SG collective, welcomes the move for more apprenticeships for the in-demand areas. He hopes that the scheme will subsequently broaden to include producers and arts managers.

More incentives for donations to arts and heritage groups

Arts and heritage groups will stand to gain from a $100 million top-up of the Cultural Matching Fund (CMF) scheme, which provides dollar-for-dollar matching for cash donations, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong

announced in his Budget speech on Feb 18.

The top-up is the fund’s third.

More than $400 million has been disbursed to arts and heritage groups since the launch of the CMF in 2014. After it launched with $200 million, the fund received two top-ups of $150 million each in 2017 and 2022.

The number of private donors whose donations are matched by the fund has also quadrupled from 2,000 in FY2014 to 8,000 in FY2023.

“What we do with the CMF is we let audiences decide – which arts company has got good governance, which has good strong donor relations, which one has good artistic offerings. They choose and we match,” said Mr Tong.

Qualifying groups can apply for the CMF via OurSG Grants Portal from April 1 to May 31.

New studies to reckon with the future of arts

With arts groups and activities struggling for space in land-scarce Singapore

, the NAC is commissioning a study into future arts spaces that will inform cultural policy over the next decade.

Poet Yeow Kai Chai, former director of the Singapore Writers Festival, said there is currently no literary centre in Singapore that can encourage inter-disciplinary conversations and serve as a meeting point for writers and other artists. Current arts spaces are too siloed, he said. Calling the literary arts “the mother of all art forms”, he added: “Support the literary arts and the literary arts will support the other art forms.”

Three studies are also being conducted by the NAC and National Heritage Board to understand how arts and heritage-based programmes can promote health and well-being in a rapidly ageing society.