Monday, 22 June 2009
A street performer? He was using his nose to blow a musical instrument =）
Toilets..
The LONG stretch of queue for the free coke zero. kiasu singaporean? =D
Some food stalls...
A "piled-up“ rubbish bin after the event ends..
Brief Introduction
The festival that I had chosen to do on is the Singapore Arts Festival. Being a multi-racial country with cultural diversity, it is realized that a festival should be organized to display the unique cultural arts from the different local ethnic groups. As a result, the Singapore Arts Festival was first held by the National Arts Council in the year 1977. Over the years, arts have been evolving tremendously to an entirely whole new dimension.
Arts in the 21st century are being expressed in different kinds of forms, namely; dances, dramas, music, visual art. Nowadays, blending of arts from two different countries/cultures/ethnics is commonly seen in performances. For example in music, the performing orchestra might have a mixture of both the Chinese and Western musical instruments. This “East-meets-West” concept has become a significance of cultural exchanges. And for that, it indicates a big leap in the progression of arts as compared to the past where arts were more confined.
Other than just having local artists to perform in the Singapore Arts Festival, drama clubs, band groups and artistes from the overseas are being invited to participate in one of the Asia’s important art event as well. In order to personally have a feel of how and what it is like to be immersed in the artistic atmosphere, I made a site visit to the Singapore Arts Festival’s opening ceremony at the Marina Barrage on 16 May 2009, 7.57pm via the free shuttle bus provided by the event organizer.
Comparison of Singapore Arts Festival 2009 to Hong Kong Arts Festival 2009
The reason for choosing Hong Kong Arts Festival 2009 to compare with Singapore Arts Festival 2009 is that the arts festival in Hong Kong was a big success (over 94% of the tickets were sold out). There were a total of 122 ticketed performances and 74 shows had the tickets all sold out.
Singapore Arts Festival 2009
Product
• A series of arts programmes available for the participants of the festival to choose from so as to satisfy their desires for artistic performances.
Place
• Having arts programmes at several different locations rather than just at the esplanade. The other locations include Raffles City, Chinatown MRT, Dôme Marina Square. By having arts programme at different places, it is trying to express that arts can happen at many different places, anytime.
Partnerships
• The arts festival has many partners and thus will have more funds to do more arts programmes.
Promotion
• In collaboration with EZ-Link, any purchase of tickets to any art shows will give people a chance to get free exclusive ArtsFest 2009 EZ-Link cards. Singapore Arts Festival also has a blog to let people know about the latest updates. To keep up with the latest trend, they have a facebook account to get in touch with the teenagers and update them of the arts events. There are also early bird discounts.
Programming
• Has more programmes and caters to more market segments; Dance, Music, Fest Connect, Outreach, Theatre, Visual Arts.
People
• Staffs are hospitable.
Packaging & Distribution
• Singapore Arts Festival managed to get their tickets sold at all SISTIC outlets and through internet and telephone bookings as well.
Price
• 20% discount concession tickets are available to full-time students, NSFs and senior citizens
Hong Kong Arts Festival 2009
Product
• A variety of arts programmes for participants of the festival to choose from so as to meet their requirements for enjoying arts.
Place
• Most of the time having arts programmes in the arts centres like the Hong Kong Cultural Centre, Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts and Hong Kong City Hall. The festival organizer did not make full use of the places in Hong Kong to display arts and telling people that arts is happening everywhere.
Partnerships
• The arts festival partners with the same few companies for many years, example; Hong Kong Jockey Club.
Promotion
• In collaboration with Wing Hang Bank, purchases of Hong Kong Arts Festival Mastercard will entitle cardholders to exclusive privileges.
Programming
• The programmes are broke down into Family, Music, Dance, Opera, Theatre. Comparing to Singapore’s, the programmes here does not sound that interesting as there are no interactive arts.
People
• A total of 1756 artists participated in the festival
Packaging & Distribution
• Seemingly slightly similar to Singapore Arts Festival, bookings can be made through the internet or on the phone.
Price
• The tickets are actually priced quite high. To cater to the students, they have the Student Ticket Scheme whereby tickets sold to student would be half the price of the normal price.
Best Practices
As most people prefer to own unique things, thus by promoting the “Exclusive ArtsFest 2009 EZ-Link cards” is one of the best practices. Only 1000 specially designed EZ-Link cards would be up for grabs for every purchase of ArtsFest programmes tickets at SISTIC outlets thus this promotion will definitely attract people who would love to own an exclusive, unique and artistic EZ-Link card.
Also, by situating certain arts programmes at new areas such as the MRT Station and Dôme Marina Square, it will attract more people’s attention to come and view on what is happening. This would also change people’s perception that arts is boring and can only be displayed and viewed from a confined theatre instead of other new, fun and exciting public places.
The Concession scheme is also one of the best practices as some students might be interested in arts but could not fork out the money to pay for the performances. Therefore a 20% discount would greatly boost the interests of these people.
Stakeholders in the Singapore Arts Festival
Host organisation: National Arts Council Singapore
Host Community: Singaporeans
Sponsors: The Shaw Foundation, Coca Cola Light, EZ-Link, Starhub Cable Vision Ltd
Media: Mediacorp’s Channel 5 and Okto, Newspapers, Magazines, Radio
Co-workers: The crew that is involved in the festival by doing ushering, ticketing and technical works so as to ensure that the lightings/machines needed for the specific arts programme are working smoothly.
Participants & Spectators: Artists who are involved in the performances and the people who went to enjoy the arts programme.
Stakeholders in the Hong Kong Arts Festival
Host organisation: Hong Kong Arts Festival Society Limited
Host Community: Hong Kong citizens
Sponsors: Credit Suisse, Shun Hing Group, Leisure and Cultural Services
Department, the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust
Media: Hong Kong Newspapers and Magazines, Hong Kong TV Station
Co-workers: The crew who has been helping out in ushering, ticketing and
technical works during the event.
Participants & Spectators: Artists who are involved in the performances and the people who went to enjoy the arts programme.
Main purpose of the Festival
The main purpose of the festival is to showcase and display the unique arts from different local ethnic groups to the world and at the same time, it allows people from different races and religions to discover and further understand the artistic work pieces of the different ethnics as well as allows artists from different ethnic groups to interact with each other. This could create social cohesion because after viewing the art pieces of different ethnics, one may be interested in finding out more and would perhaps make friends with people of different races to know more about their cultures.
Amount of Tourism Benefits Received by Host City
By hosting the Arts Festival, many tourists from around the world might wish to be involved in the immersion of the “artistic surrounding”. As a result, they would be interested in participating in art events in the festival. Therefore, there would definitely be an increase in tourist arrivals which would further lead to the increment of Singapore’s total tourism industry’s revenue.
There would be more jobs created for Singaporeans as the festival would require staff for doing ushering, ticketing, front-line and etc. Also, if more tourists from overseas are attracted to the festival, there would be a need for more hotel rooms. Hotels can increase room rates during that period to make more money. More jobs would be created once again when more hotel rooms are occupied as there will be more rooms to clean thus there will be a need to hire more cleaners or the need to hire more security guards.
It would be an eye opener for Singapore artists when renowned artists from all over the world arrive to perform in Singapore. This could also influence local artists and spur them on to enhance their creativity. When that happens, new forms of arts could be seen in Singapore and a lively cultural scene can be spotted. Perhaps there would be another opportunity to showcase the works of the local talents to attract tourists to come visit Singapore again.
Some tourists who have enjoyed the Singapore Arts Festival/Anything about Singapore might go back to their homeland and spread the updates to people whom they know. As a result, out of curiosity, people who received the news may come to Singapore and check out and thus the cycle goes on and on.
References
http://www.hk.artsfestival.org
http://www.singaporeartsfest.com