SINGAPORE - The National Heritage Board (NHB) will, from the third quarter of this year, begin collecting artefacts and stories for the Founders' Memorial, which is set to be unveiled in 2027.
These items sought from the public should relate to key milestones in Singapore's history and reflect the country's founding values, said Minister of State for Culture, Community and Youth Alvin Tan during the debate on his ministry's budget on Monday (March 8).
It is among two projects he gave an update on, both of which he said would help advance the country's identity, heritage and history.
Construction of the Founders' Memorial at Bay East Garden should start next year.
Conceptualised in 2019 and including a lake, a discovery forest trail, a viewing gallery and an amphiteatre, the Founders' Memorial is meant to look back at the contributions of the country's pioneer leaders.
The second project Mr Tan shared relates to the Collecting Contemporary Singapore initiative by the National Museum, which started in May last year.
One of the first coordinated efforts to expand and diversify the museum's collection of Singapore's recent history, the project so far has secured about 4,000 public submissions including photos, narrative accounts, videos, webpages and items such as posters and designer masks.
Although these so far have centred around people's experience of Covid-19, Mr Tan said the collection will be expanded to other themes beyond Covid-19 over the next few years.
"(This will) encourage Singaporeans to contribute objects that best represent and characterise life in Singapore in recent times," he said.
During the debate, Mr Darryl David (Ang Mo Kio GRC) called for more to be done to preserve hawker centres so that "the award is more than a trophy to be dusted occasionally" - in reference to Singapore's successful nomination of its hawker culture to the Unesco intangible cultural heritage list last December.
Minister for Culture, Community and Youth Edwin Tong said people can look forward to festivals, exhibitions and NHB grants related to hawker culture.
Among these is a digital exhibition of poetic and graphical interpretations of hawker culture during the Singapore Heritage Festival this year, and hawker content at selected MRT stations. He did not elaborate on the grants.
Minister of State for Culture, Community and Youth Low Yen Ling said the NHB will also organise public consultations to identify new nominations for the Unesco list of intangible cultural heritage of humanity.
These will likely be selected from the NHB's intangible cultural heritage inventory, which now has 97 practices and cultural artefacts. A possibility previously mooted is Chinese music genre Xinyao.
Said Ms Low: "We are indeed proud of our cultural assets, and want to share these with the world. I invite all Singaporeans to actively contribute their ideas and suggestions to NHB when more details are announced."
