A video on the Singapore Arts Festival- Opening Ceremony
The Singapore Arts Festival
The Singapore Arts Festival first began in 1977 as a national arts festival celebrating the local arts activities of Singapore's diverse communities. Over the last three decades, the Festival, organised by the National Arts Council, has played a symbiotic and catalytic role in the development of the artistic and cultural life of Singapore. It has helped to transform the city's cultural landscape, turning it into one of Asia's major cultural capitals today. It has influenced the work of artists and has since generated a growing public demand for the arts, spawning new cultural platforms, events, and movements that help underpin the lively cultural scene in present Singapore.
The Singapore Arts Festival remains the largest singular event on Singapore's arts calendar, inviting artists from more than 20 countries, offering more than 400 activities and attracting up to 500,000 attendances – a 4-week infusion of performances and events that inspires and captures the public imagination of the city.
Comparisons between the Singapore Arts Festival and Edinburgh Festivals Fringe
Product
Both festivals are large scale events by nature and the purpose is to provide a platform for the arts such as dance, music, theatre and many more. They also have many activities besides performances over a long period of time. Through these festivals, the public will be exposed to many different cultural and arts performances. They can also be aware of new and talented artistes when they watched the performances.
Place
The Singapore Arts Festival consists of many types of performance and these performances take place in different venues. For example, they made use of the Esplanade, Victoria Theatre, LASALLE College of the Arts or National Museum of Singapore. In addition, there are also the unconventional venues like the exit of Raffles Place MRT station and Chinatown MRT station and also in a restaurant like Dôme in Marina Square. The opening ceremony, which I had attended, was conducted in Marina Barrage and the closing ceremony near Yishun MRT.
These venues are highly accessible for the public as these places are either located in the central area or accessible by public transport. The venues, I believe, are capable of containing the amount of audience and provide the right ambiences.
For example, Joanna MacGregor, a British pianist, will be performing in the Esplanade. The venue is appropriate for her performance as the Esplanade has the sound systems and equipment she will need. The Esplanade concert hall is also big enough to accommodate a big number of audiences for more than an hour.
For the opening ceremony, it has to be at Marina Barrage which has an outdoor “stage” for the performance. There were fireworks and a prop with was quite tall and big.
The tickets for the Singapore Arts Festival are easily available. One can order them through the internet on the Sistic website. They can also go to authorised Sistic agents located in shopping malls. There are also overseas Sistic agents selling the tickets to interested parties living overseas. Or, they can also purchase the tickets at the performance venues provided if they are not sold out.
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2008 features performances and shows in 247 venues. The amount of performances and venues are many times more than what the Singapore Arts Festival has to offer. They have performances in large venues like “The Circuit”, which is a “tented village” including a room which is able to accommodate up to 400 audiences. There are also venues like theatres, schools, historic castles, lecture theatres, churches and even the homes of the audiences. They are performing everywhere which the public will have no problem accessing to these performances.
A computerised booking system was used, allowing the tickets to be bought over a number of locations around the city. When the official website was launched, tickets were then available online. An E-Ticket Tent was introduced which allowed people to book tickets online at the festival. Several venues will also use their own ticketing systems too. These features will create conveniences for the public to buy the tickets.
Partnerships
Singapore Arts Festival has a number of sponsors and partners to carry out the festival. The official partners for the festivals are TV stations like Channel 5 and Okto, The Coca-Cola Company, government agencies like the STB (Singapore Tourism Board) and the Tote Board and private sectors like the Shaw Foundation and University of Western Australia.
They also have venue sponsors like SBS Transit, LASALLE College of the Arts and National Parks Board.
There are also many other sponsors for the Singapore Arts Festival, making the festival a success. Harry’s Bar is one of the sponsors and ticket holders can have 10% off total bill.
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe has major sponsors like the RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland), HMV, Metro and many more. They also have supporters like the Scottish Government, the Scottish Arts Council and more.
Promotion
The Singapore Arts Festival has used a full range of marketing mix. We can see the advertisements on televisions mostly in Channel 5, over the radio and on print. There are also banners put up along the streets of Orchard road to grab the attentions of people. They also have an official website to allow people to access and read about the performances.
They even got onto the blogging scene and blog about the festival online, created a facebook account and also on “Twitter” a new social networking website.
They organised a contest for the public whereby they can win cash if their videos are selected.
They also worked with many partners to give discounts and promotions to ticket holders of Singapore Arts Festival. Like discounted rates for hotel stays or discounts for dining in selected restaurants.
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe has received many awards for their performances. This, in turn, will help in the promotion of the festivals. Everyone will want to experience the award-winning performances. They also have their own official website to promote the festival and they established themselves as the largest art festival in the world. Artistes who want to promote their performances can promote through the Festival Fringe Society.
They also held a contest for students to design the poster for the festival. The winning poster will be put up during the festival and sold to people as souvenirs. The winning design was unveiled at St. James Shopping Centre which is one of the sponsors for the festival. Through this event, the public will know more about the festival.
Packaging and Distribution
The tickets for Singapore Arts Festival are distributed by Sistic. Sistic is recognised as a reputable company for ticketing. In Singapore, the company is the largest, selling tickets for more than 90% of the performances. They even sell tickets overseas too. They offer both online and customer oriented services to customers.
The tickets for Edinburgh Festival Fringe are sold via their online system or individual sellers. Many cultural and arts festivals are packaged together to form the Edinburgh Festival Fringe attracted many performers of different genres like theatre, comedy and more.
Programming
The programming for these two festivals is similar. They have performances and shows daily. However, the performances for Singapore Arts Festivals may not be as frequent as the Edinburgh Festival Fringe due to the lesser amount of performances. The Edinburgh Festival Fringe has the capability to do so as there are over 30,000 performances and there may be many performances at a time.
The performances for Singapore Arts Festival will normally start around evening time as people do not have to make time specially to attend the performances. Many performances will be held on weekends rather than weekdays.
People
The Singapore Arts Festival and Edinburgh Festival Fringe has many volunteers and employees in different departments working. Their “cast” will be the performers they have engaged. Their audiences are people interested in the arts and performances, or fans of the artistes or idols. There may also be people will want to experience the atmosphere of the festivals.
Price
The ticketing prices for Singapore Arts Festivals range from below $50 to more than $50. There are discounts for full-time students, senior citizens and National Service males. There are also special discounts when they purchased more than 4 tickets, group bookings and school bookings. There are also free shows too.
ArtsFest Club members enjoy discounts on their tickets too.
The initial ticket prices for performances in Edinburgh Festivals Fringe are £10 to £20 due to the increasing theatre license, hiring large venues for the audiences. However, there are free shows available, mostly are comedies.
Stakeholders
The host organisation for Singapore Arts Festival is the National Arts Council. The host community will be Singaporeans.
The sponsors for the festival will be Lee Foundation, Urban Redevelopment Authority, Hong Leong Foundation, VivoCity, WingTai Asia, Raffles City, Public Utilities Board, Suntec Singapore, Singapore Mass Rapid Transit, Marina Mandarin Singapore, Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce and History, Starhub Cable Vision, Yahoo! and many more.
The media will be through television channels like Channel 5 and Okto and also on print media. The co-workers will be venue partners like Dôme in Marina Square. They will have to work with the management there to make the events successful.
The participants will be the performers, both internationals and locals and the spectators will be Singaporeans, tourists and arts enthusiasts.
Main purpose of the event
The purpose of this festival is to celebrate the local art activities of Singaporeans. It is also a catalyst to the development of the artistic and cultural life in Singapore. This has also lead to Singapore being established as one of the major cultural city in Asia. The festival has also influenced the works of the artists and stimulated a growing demand for the arts and also is a platform to help underpin the cultural scene in Singapore.
The festival also invested in works that joins disciplines, languages, cultures and geographical boundaries. It also discovers emerging and new artists and allows both local and international artists to collaborate and exchange.
Tourism benefits received by host city
With the commencement of this festival, visitors will be attracted to Singapore to participate in it. This, in turn, will create economic benefits like increase in tourism revenue and creation of jobs.
If the visitors extend their stay, they will spend more in Singapore. Hence, there will be a multiplier effect as the tourist dollar can be felt in many ways. There may also be an increase in tax revenue.
Businessmen can also use this opportunity to come up with new business ideas like creating new products or hosting these visitors. In the end, there will be more commercial activities.
The image of Singapore will be better as the foreigners will be able to identify Singapore as a cultural capital. Not only will this makes Singapore has an improved profile, it will also increase investments in Singapore.
Both locals and visitors will be able to experience the same performances and learn about the arts together. There may also be an exchange of cultures between both parties. This will broaden Singaporeans’ knowledge in the sense that they learn about other cultures and also learn to appreciate the arts.
After watching the performances, the locals may be inspired to do a show of their own. So they may participate in the festival which will lead to an increase in community participation.
Pride may be instilled in some locals when they travelled overseas and foreigners recognized Singapore as an arts city. This may seem to have some level of prestige in it. Social cohesion may be promoted when different races are encouraged to perform together.