Building an engaged and cohesive society

Parliamentary colleagues
Mr Sam Tan, and 
Ms Low Yen Ling,
GPC Chairman Mr Baey Yam Keng
Ms Yeoh Chee Yan, Permanent Secretary,
Colleagues and friends from MCCY,
And our partners

1. A very good afternoon to all of you, and I’m very happy to see all of you for our second Work Plan Seminar. As you saw from the video clip just now, we had a very busy year last year, and we’ve made many achievements, and these would not have been possible without our strong partnerships with all of you. So let me thank all of you for being there with us and working together with us to achieve our goals. Thank you very much!

2. I would also want to thank all our MCCY officers, both officers in our HQ, our stat boards and in our companies, all of you have had a busy year; MCCY is a relatively new Ministry, I think this month we celebrate our second anniversary. It’s been a busy year for all of us getting things going and doing all the work that you saw just now in the video. So thank you also for your dedication and hard work. And that deserves another round of applause!

3. I’ve spoken on previous occasions about our plans for the arts and sports – how we want to make Singapore a cultural city and also a sporting nation. So today, I would like to focus on something slightly different. 

4. I’d like to share more about our broader mission of building a cohesive community, and how the arts, sports and volunteerism can help us achieve this mission. And I will also elaborate on our plans for SG50, our celebration next year.

Building community through sports

5. So let me start with sports. How can we build a community through sports? We’ve had a busy year in sports; it’s been very productive – we’ve had two major Games the Commonwealth and Asian Games, which just completed. In fact, we’re going to start on the Asian Para Games soon.

6. Our athletes did very well in both Games, and they came back with more medals than before and achieving more personal bests, and broke more new records than before. These are partly the results of the investments we’ve put into our sport excellence systems, but they also in many ways reflect the grit and determination of our athletes themselves, the hard work they put into training, not just for themselves, but to bring glory to Singapore.

7. During these competitions, it was very heartening to see Singaporeans rallying behind our athletes. I’m sure all of you were probably doing it in your own way, but I speak from my experience when I remember, during the Commonwealth, I was at home with my parents, at their home, watching Derek Wong at the badminton finals of Commonwealth. This was Derek Wong fighting for a gold medal. It was not just us, because around the block, we could hear neighbours cheering for him, so clearly, it was something that people were watching and following closely. Recently, at the Asian Games, when Joseph Schooling was breaking – both the Commonwealth and the Asian Games – when he won many medals. At house visits, I would see residents with their TV sets tuned on to the Commonwealth or Asian Games, following him as well. So, clearly there is a building up of support for athletes. This bodes well for the future of sport.

8. These are also special moments that unite us, because we are cheering for Team Singapore, and we feel proud as Singaporeans because of what our athletes have achieved. And if you talk to our athletes, you’ll know they really appreciate the support that we give to them. It may seem like it’s something to be expected or taken for granted, but they really appreciate it. You heard it just now, in the video clip, from one of our youngest national athletes, Martina Veloso. She’s already gotten a gold medal in the world championship for her sport. You heard it in the Highlights video just now, which I’m quoting it again. She’s excited for the SEA Games 2015 because “there will be a home crowd cheering for us. They are the ones that give me the motivation to do even better.” And that’s what it’s about, when there’s a home crowd cheering for you, when you know there are Singaporeans cheering for them, our athletes really go all out. So I hope all Singaporeans, all of us, will continue to rally, and stand behind our TeamSG athletes. We want to support them as they strive to do their best and bring glory to Singapore, particularly next year, when we host the SEA Games in June and the ASEAN Para Games in December. This will be home ground, we have good home ground advantage, but we must make the most of it. The venues are ready, the organising committee is working very hard. We meet very regularly with Teck Yin and the team, and the whole team is working very hard to organise these events. So we think we’re ready, but what we need is Singaporeans to rally behind us, and to support Team Singapore for the SEA Games and the ASEAN Para Games next year. 

9. Besides uniting to cheer for our athletes, we also want Singaporeans to not just be spectators, but participate in sports, and live better through sport. And that’s how we can build a stronger community as well. So the community part comes in when we cheer our Team Singapore athletes together, but it also comes about when we participate in sports together. So how can we go about building a community through sports?

10. Our first strategy is to provide better sport facilities. That’s why we have a Sports Facilities Masterplan. I mentioned this during the Community of Supply earlier this year, and our aim is to have sports facilities available within a 10-minute walk of most homes. So wherever you stay in Singapore, you take a 10-minute walk, you can get to a sports facility. We’re not there yet today, but progressively, with our Sports Facilities Masterplan, we’ll make it happen.

11. That’s the long-term plan, but for the immediate, we already have a crown jewel, and that’s the Sports Hub, which is something that’s completed. You see a photo of the Sports Hub here. It almost looks like an artist’s impression, because it’s so beautiful. In fact, it’s a real picture taken in June, when the Sports Hub opened, and we had our countdown for the SEA Games. So the Sports Hub is ready, the facilities are there, and we already have a good calendar of very high-quality sporting events. The Singapore vs Juventus friendly match was played some weeks back, and it saw over 27,000 attendees. A very large crowd, they were doing the Kallang Roar, they were bringing back the Kallang Wave, and they really enjoyed the match. Tomorrow, we already have a sell-out crowd for the Japan vs Brazil match. I don’t know how many of you are going, or have bought tickets. It’s sold out already – sorry – so even in MCCY, we have no spare ticket for you, if you have not bought tickets. We look forward to that, and then of course, next week, we have the World Tennis Association Finals, the WTA Finals. So your women tennis stars - Serena Williams, and Maria Sharapova, I think the top 10, will be coming to Singapore and they will be playing the finals in Singapore at the Sports Hub. So it’s a very packed calendar of high-quality sporting events for Singaporeans to enjoy, to participate in. Not to participate but to enjoy and watch. But, as I said, we don’t just want to encourage sports spectatorship, we want to encourage sports participation as well. And that’s what the Sports Hub is meant to do.

12. So within the Sports Hub itself, there are also many opportunities for Singaporeans to participate in sports. You can go to the mall in the Sports Hub, and you can do rock climbing. I think they have one of the largest indoor rock climbing walls in Singapore – it’s very popular with children. They run Experience Sports every weekend. So you can go to the Sports Hub, bring your children, bring your family members, and you can get to experience different kinds of sports within the Sports Hub itself. Of course we have other things in the Sports Hub as well, we just opened the Sports Museum, where you can see the exhibits from the Youth Olympics; you can see the achievements of our sports pioneers, how sport has evolved in Singapore. There’s the Shimano Cycling World, where you can experience with the latest in cycling technology. So there are many things to see and do at the Sports Hub. I went over for a quick visit recently, when we had a public holiday - Hari Raya Hajiand I was glad to see large crowds at the Sports Hub; the rock climbing wall was very popular, so people are already are making this a destination for their sporting, entertainment and lifestyle pursuits. This is exactly what we hope to achieve when we built the Sports Hub – we want to make a place for community bonding or get together through sports. I think that’s happening, and I hope many more Singaporeans will have great experiences and will share new memories together from their time at the Sports Hub.

13. So, that’s the first strategy, which is to have good infrastructure and good spaces that bring people together, both to watch sports as well as to participate in sports. The second strategy is also important and that is to provide attractive and accessible sporting programmes so that there is something for them to do and they are attracted to the programme to come back again and again.

14. That’s the reason why we launched ActiveSG as a national movement for sports earlier this year, and through ActiveSG we want to encourage Singaporeans to come together to play sports together, and to try their hand at new sports. When we started this, the team that presented the concept for ActiveSG might have been trying to be modest, so they said they aimed to have a few tens of thousands people at the start of ActiveSG. However, I told them that this was not enough for a national movement for sports, where you need at least 10 – 15 per cent of your population to start and reach a tipping point. Hence I said to aim for 500,000 members and they were slightly overwhelmed at the start but I’m very happy to say that they have already surpassed this target in less than a year. So we have that number of people on membership and all of them, in fact every Singaporean, has been given a $100 ActiveSG credit. Many of the members who have joined ActiveSG have already started to use their $100 credit for things like swimming pool, gym entry passes and booking sports facilities. And they are also using it to sign up for new programmes, because as I said, that’s an important part of what we are trying to do – not just about venues but about having more attractive programmes.

15. So we are bringing in more new and exciting fitness programmes into our sports centres. For example, this picture of the sports which they call Piloxing. What is Piloxing? Well, it’s a mix between pilates and boxing. They have brought it in, it is quite popular, and it is a high impact workout. Another activity that is starting at our sports centres and proving to be quite popular is Aqua Spinning. This is water cycling, so instead of cycling on land, you do resistance cycling in the water. It is very effective because it is lower impact, especially for people with their joints or knees, but yet you get a very good work out from it. There is another sport called Flippa Ball. This is a modified water polo, suitable for boys and girls. It is played in pools between 0.8m to 1.2m, so it is shallow enough for them to stand but yet deep enough for them to swim. And this is a good way for young people to get involved in a sport like Water Polo, at an early age.

16. So, these are different things we are bringing into our sport centres we are bringing in more activities and programmes for everyone to enjoy sports together. We spoke to the Yeo family and asked them about their ActiveSG experience so far: This is the picture of the Yeo family, they have 4 children in this photo but actually they have 5. The fifth one is a baby. So, if they are converted, then the whole family gets into sports. The children are Aloysius, Darius, Bernice and Charlene. The wife is Linna, who works as a business development manager and the husband is Terence, an IT manager. As Linna said, before ActiveSG was launched, weekends for the family would be more about shopping or watching TV or going to the movies, things that most Singaporean families would do – “indoor activities”. However, now that they have ActiveSG, the family does more outdoor activities together – they go swimming 1-2 times a week. Linna plans to find gymnastics programmes for her girls and a sport for her son Aloysious. For herself, she is interested in the trampoline and jogging activities in the sport centres, and also might try the water sports like kayaking or canoeing. This is just one family we spoke to, and I think there are many more who are benefitting from ActiveSG and hope to get this momentum going through ActiveSG.

17. This is what we are trying to achieve, to have a national movement for sports and bring Singaporeans together through sports. This really requires a mindset shift on our part. It is no longer just about operating a sport centre for hire, that is a relatively easy thing to do. You have the sport centre, you have the infrastructure, you put it out for people to book. This goes beyond that, now we are talking about actively running programmes and engaging communities. It is a shift which is progressively happening across our sporting agencies and venues, and we hope to reach out to more more Singaporeans, and get them excited to do sports together, therefore to build stronger communities and to live better through sports.

Building community through the arts

18. Likewise, we are also looking at how to bring Singaporeans together through the arts, how can we build community through the arts. Within the arts space there are many things that are already happening. As you heard earlier, we have a whole series of programmes, we’ve built up a more vibrant arts calendar, and we have truly made progress in making Singapore a cultural city, an international city for the arts. We recently had the Singapore International Festival of the Arts, for example. It was very well received, with a warm reception and glowing reviews for many of the productions within the SIFA programme.

19. We are also putting in more resources and investments to the arts. We have a Cultural Matching Fund announced sometime back and we have made good progress. So far we have received more than $30m of applications for matching grants. Meaning to say, the arts groups have received $30m of donations and have applied for matching on that $30m. So, if all of that is granted then it would double the donations and you will have $60m of investments in the arts sector. We welcome more to come through the matching fund.

20. So, there is a lot happening in the arts sector and again, the question I would like to raise to all of us is, how can we build community through the arts. How can we give opportunities for all Singaporeans to experience and be inspired by great art?

21. I think that again involves a two-prong strategy, much like what we do for sports. We need to look at the hardware, the infrastructure, and at the same time, we also need to look at software – the programming, the engagement, the community. So again, we need to have a two-pronged strategy, to look at how we can build community through the arts.

22. On the infrastructure side, we already have major plans to refurbish our cultural institutions and to build new ones. Earlier this year, we celebrated the return of Victoria Theatre and Victoria Concert Hall. We’ve done four years of work to refurbish these venues and they have been returned to their former splendour, and more.

23. Since the opening in July, we have had many bookings for both the Theatre and Concert Hall – not just art groups, but also schools and even clan associations and all sorts of groups.

24. And so, it has become very popular and I believe it will once again be a place where memories are created and bonds are formed.

25. We have plans to update the museums, refresh the Esplanade, and in the museum and heritage sector, there’s also a lot that we are doing and much to look forward to next year.

26. The Indian Heritage Centre that is already being built will be ready early next year. It looks beautiful, and will be a focal point for the Indian community in Singapore, and for all who wish to know about our local Indian heritage and culture.

27. We have a revamp of the National Museum and also the Asian Civilisations Museum. It is coming up and will be ACM ready in August next year, in time for our National Day.

28. We have a new National Gallery which is being built and will be ready in November next year. So, by end 2015, we will have a whole series of both refurbished, and new cultural institutions in Singapore.

29. Our arts infrastructure will improve and will get better. And the museums will also be free all Singaporeans to enjoy. But the issue is not just about the venues, but the experience of the public, and the quality of our engagement with them.

30. Just as we discussed earlier in sports, how can we get people to enjoy the experiences with arts, and how can we engage them through the arts. Again, this entails a mindset shift.

31. We cannot think of our museums or our cultural institutions simply as places where we curate content and knowledge. In fact, the more important and central role of the museum is to be facilitators of participation – to facilitate engagement and participation with the public.

32. And this is not unique to us, because we see this happening in other museums around the world. For example, the director of the Rijksmuseum invited by NHB to give a talk here recently. It was a very good talk – I did not attend the talk, but I met with him. The talk was refreshingly titled “Throwing out the Rulebook: How Museums can be in Step with the Future”.

33. This is somebody who has been successful at the Rijksmuseum and he is challenging his team to rethink the status quo; to think through and see how they can run museums in a completely different way. For example, he shared with me that the Rijksmuseum has a new website. On the new website, they have put high-resolution images of their best artworks – all to be freely downloaded and used. When he had pushed for this initially, his people were all aghast. These are beautiful, precious artworks – artworks that you would want to sell, you would want people to pay for them – but instead, you are now putting high resolution images of these artworks online for people to use freely. But he pushed for it, and it was a change in mindset, and it became very successful because people started downloading, and started adapting the images to put it on mugs, cups, postcards, and all sorts of different things. So it helped to spread the word about the wonderful art they may have at the Rijksmuseum. This, of course, became a way of publicity for the museum, and they got more people interested in the arts, talking about the arts, and it got more people going to the museum.

34. There is another interesting titbit that he shared which resonated very strongly with me, and I want to share with all of you, and especially those of you who are in our museums sector. They have a similar challenge as us, because he says he looks around and he doesn’t think that anyone can stand, look at the exhibit, and then read the text at the exhibit. In today’s world, people just don’t have the patience anymore to stand around, reading the text, especially when it is too long. So he has a rule for all his curators – nothing on the wall can be more than 60 words. And I think we will do well to adopt that in our museums too. It is challenging, because if you go around our museums, there are many things which are more than 60 words, but if you keep to that discipline, then it forces you to curate and to present the exhibits in a different way. It forces you to simplify, it forces you to think about how you can engage the audience in a more meaningful way. I think those are things we have to learn – how can we shift our mindsets beyond just being curators of knowledge and content. 

35. That is important, and we should still keep that – but at the same time, how can we go beyond our museum walls, how can we go beyond our venue confines – to engage the public more actively, to facilitate participation, and to build communities. And that is a challenge that I will pose to all of us in MCCY – in our cultural sector, our sports sector – think about ways in which we can do this.

36. In many ways, I already see this happening. We had, at the National Museum, the People’s Collection. This was an exhibition that they did in collaboration with MediaCorp. MediaCorp had a TV programmed called ‘Treasure Hunt’, where they invited Singaporeans to donate exhibits or artefacts that are precious to them and reflect a part of Singapore’s history. And so, this was put together, curated and exhibited at the National Museum, and it was very well-received. You have people coming to the museums for the first time, and they donated their artefacts readily. Because it is an artefact from the people, with it being something that they donated and contributed, there was a very special resonance when they came to see the exhibition. So it was so successful that the curators who were doing it were pleasantly surprised at how warm the reception was that they plan to do a second part next year with MediaCorp’s ‘Treasure Hunt 2’.

37. Another example is the Children’s Museum that we’ve launched recently at the National Museum, Play@NMS. Again, this is something quite different from what we’ve been used to, but very popular with young children, with families. And again, we are seeing many more people coming to our museums, often for the first time. They are surprised at how accessible it is, and the fact that the children are enjoying the experience as well. And I think that again is changing the way people perceive of our museums, and I hope that we can continue in this direction.

38. We are also taking things out of the museum walls. So the Asian Civilisations Museum did a River Nights festival recently this year, where they engaged different stakeholders around the river, and they activated the place with programming, events, activities, and attracted many people.

39. The Singapore Night Festival is another good example. This is something that has started out for some time, and now, it has become an iconic event in our cultural calendar. This year, in particular, we had a great turn out. More than 560,000 visitors came to enjoy the performances, which stretched from Cathay Green to Armenian Street. And if you were there over the two weekends, there was a lot to see and there was a real excitement. There was a real buzz in the crowd – you could see people from all age groups, young and old. In fact, I went the first weekend as Guest-of-Honour, and because there was so much to see and it was so exciting, I decided to go again the second weekend – just on my own for a quiet visit. On the second weekend, it was raining, but the spirits were not dampened. People were enjoying themselves. I think again, it shows how we can, if we put on our minds to it, curate and put together programmes that are exciting that can really engage the public. And I would encourage, beyond our cultural institutions – whether it is the Esplanade, the museums, Victoria Theatre and Victoria Concert Hall, these are cultural institutions within our Ministry – but I would also encourage all our arts groups to embrace this shift in mindset. To look at not just focussing on producing high quality arts, but to think about how we can engage our communities more effectively. How we can give opportunities to everyone to experience and be inspired by the arts?

40. The SSO is an example. They did a wonderful concert at the Proms, very well-received, but they are also making an effort to reach out to the community with their Concert in the Park series. They hold these concerts at the Botanic Gardens, or at the parks, all over Singapore. I think they have performed in Tampines, and other different places. They always get large crowds coming to enjoy the music. So it’s not just about whether it needs to be high brow or low brow – it is not about that. I think if you make the effort to have good art, great art, it is not enough. You need to activate and engage the community. People will come, they will experience and enjoy the arts for themselves.

41. Another good example is the PAssionArts Festival, which brings in artists to engage the community in creating art together. So PA is an important partner in this. They work together with us in putting together PAssionArts Festival. They have been very successful in growing this as a collaboration with artists and the community. The focus this year was on large scale artworks or what they call, as an acronym, W.O.W – Works of Wonder. The Works of Wonder that they have created are amazing. Artists collaborating with ordinary Singaporeans, sometimes in the hundreds, doing large scale artworks. For example, residents in Mountbatten and Marine Parade came together and painted over 1,000 umbrellas as a visual arts installation. In West Coast, artist Sun Yu-Li engaged over 400 residents to produce this striking canvas art on HDB flats. 

42. These are good examples of how we can create high quality art and also engage communities. There is much more we can do, and we are already moving in this direction. I would encourage everyone in the sector – our arts groups, our museums, our cultural institutions – to continue thinking about how we can do more in this area.

43. I have spoken about sports and arts and now, let me shift to talking about how we can build a cohesive community that also cares about one another. Arts and sports are strategies that can bring our people together, but we need to do more than that. We should see ourselves as our brother’s keeper, and not just strangers living next door to one another.

44. Within the Ministry, we will continue to champion a culture of giving in Singapore. We will continue to do even more to reach out and help vulnerable members of our community, through sports, arts and other means of volunteerism.

45. One good effort that is happening now is SportCares. It is an effort that SportSg has championed, to look at at-risk youths to get them to take part in sports activities, which keeps them on the pitch and off the streets.

46. Aside from playing sports, we also give our SportCares youths specific duties and responsibilities. That is to instil in them that they have something to do, they are responsible for a particular task, and show that we believe in them. And this work is bearing fruit. It is starting to see results and we are transforming lives. One example is the Saturday Night Lights (SNL). It is a SportCares football programme where youth from the community play ball together in the stadium.

47. 16 year old Pravin is one of the participants in this programme. He is a NorthLight Secondary School student.

48. Two years ago, this is how Pravin described himself: "[I was] often naughty and playful. I was late all the time. I didn't pay attention in class. I used to scold my captain if we lost in football." His teachers also said the same thing about him, that he was not interested in learning and that he was a difficult student.

49. Today Pravin is very different. He cites his teachers and Saturday Night Lights as programmes that have helped him change for the better.  He says, "I was always getting into fights before. Now I don't. I was always late. Now I am not...well, still sometimes but not so much anymore."

50. In fact, he has not only been an active participant in this programme, but he has also become a volunteer for SportCares. He has helped seniors and children learn to play new sports at our ActiveSG Open Houses and at Singapore Sports Hub. Most recently, he helped raise funds for Willing Hearts soup kitchen. He sent a note to SportCares, saying “Thank you for helping me prove to my teachers that I could change.” This is a very inspiring story of how one life has been transformed through the SportCares programmes.

51. And there are many others – many other heartwarming stories about transformed lives through SportCares. We are very encouraged by the efforts SportCares have made, the lives that it has touched. So we will be launching the new SportCares programmes this year, including a swimming programme for children from a children’s home, and a dragonboat programme for at-risk girls.

52. And likewise, we have also used the arts to uplift the less fortunate in our communities. Through the WeCare Arts Fund, which is a collaboration between the National Arts Council and the CDCs, we are supporting arts groups who want to work with beneficiaries, such as seniors or those with special needs.

53. One example is artist Kamal Dollah. He spent 10 weeks with 10 adults from the Cerebral Palsy Alliance Singapore (CPAS) giving them a hands-on experience creating batik art.

54. The beneficiaries gave us feedback that they all found the lessons very useful. They fell in love with batik painting, picked up useful skills and they learnt to express themselves through art.

55. So we have had a very good response for the WeCare Fund, with 30 applications since its launch in May. We welcome more applications and look forward to more artists making a difference in the lives of the less fortunate.

56. We also want to get companies involved in making a difference. That is another big push to promote more corporate giving.

57. The National Volunteer and Philanthropy Centre (NVPC) is our key partner spearheading this move and it has started Corporate Giving lunches with CEOs and business leaders, to see how companies can make a positive impact on society.

58. For example, StarHub has partnered with MINDS, the Movement for the Intellectually Disabled of Singapore. Starhub not only donates smartphones to students from MINDS’ Vocational Experience class, but its employees also get involved and they help to train MINDS students to improve their financial literacy.

59. This is one example. I think we can do much more with companies to get more involved in society, to get more involved in giving. Through their engagement with business leaders, NVPC is fine-tuning their strategies to encourage more corporate giving efforts by companies.

60. In addition to NVPC, we are working with the CDCs to see how we can also make it easier for our seniors to volunteer, given they bring with them a lifetime of experience which would be of value to others in the community. So the CDCs will also be stepping up to promote volunteering within their local communities.

61. So these are some of the strategies I have just described –through arts, through sports, through volunteerism. I think we can work together to build stronger communities. There is a good platform for all of us to do these next year because we are celebrating SG50, our nation’s 50th birthday. That is, again, an occasion for all of us to get excited.

Empowering our youth in the communities

61. Before I talk more about that, let me just share briefly about what we are doing for our youth efforts as well. Because we want our young people to be a key part of our culture of giving. We want the next generation to grow up with a mindset of giving back to the community.

62. This is why we have engaged youths at all level. We started with the Youth Corps which we launched in June. We are off to a good start. The pilot batch of youths are in the midst of very meaningful projects. You have heard from one of them briefly.

63. The first batch of Youth Corps are so motivated that I think if you had the chance to engage them, you will see their passion and desire to serve. This is exactly the kind of spirit that we hope to instil in our young people. The second batch of Youth Corps members practically filled up our December intake. Now we are taking application for next year, 2015. So if you know of any promising or a passionate young person, do nominate them for the Youth Corps. 

64. The Youth Corps is a rigorous one-year programme. It is limited in capacity because of the duration of programme but we are looking at other ways in which we can engage youths. For example, for younger students, such as 16-year olds who have just finished their O levels and are awaiting results, we have introduced a new National Youth Internship Programme.

65. This is a full-time internship for our youths to serve the community and gain practical life-experiences outside of schools.

66. We are piloting this internship programme this year with the Uniformed Groups, and next year we will open it up to internships in the larger pool of community organisations and nonprofits.

67. Besides providing these opportunities for young people to serve, we also want to create quality programmes and spaces for them.

68. That is why we are in the midst of reviewing *SCAPE, which is a youth park, to see how its facilities and programmes can be updated to stay relevant to today’s young people.

69. We are also looking beyond SCAPE’s location at Somerset, and asking ourselves how we can better engage youths in their own community spaces. We are consulting stakeholders as we conduct this review, and we are actively seeking feedback. So if you have any thoughts on what programmes can benefit our young people, do let us know. We will announce our findings, and unveil our plan for SCAPE version 2.0 early next year.
    
    Celebrating Singapore’s 50th birthday as one people

70. Next year will be our 50th Year of Independence, and as we look back on how far we have come as a people and a nation and how much we have going for us in the future ahead, there is much to celebrate and be thankful for.

71. This is a feeling many Singaporeans share and we have gone for road shows around the community. We have gathered what we call ‘SG50 wishes’ for Singapore. If you look at the expressions and wishes that we have collected, I think they are all very heart warming.

72. “I wish for Singapore to continue striding on with pride, striving through the many years to come along. I also wish for everyone to be joyful, healthy and hard working to have a bright future.”

73. To commemorate and celebrate this significant occasion, we have a variety of SG50 programmes lined up throughout 2015, from large-scale national events, to community events to ground-up initiatives.

74. I would like to share three special highlights. The first is a new Art Connector – a 300 metre commemorative walkway that will take you from City Hall MRT right into the footsteps of the new National Gallery Singapore.

75. The Art Connector was inspired by the words of our Pledge, “We, the citizens of Singapore, pledge ourselves as one united people”.

76. From next month onwards, the National Gallery will launch its Portraits of the People campaign. It will travel to 50 public locations island-wide and we hope to encourage Singaporeans from all walks of life to participate in renewing our Pledge and to send in self-portraits symbolising our recommitment to the values and aspirations enshrined in the Pledge.

77. Thousands of these portraits will be curated into a large community mural on the Art Connector. I think this is a fitting tribute to our nation’s 50th birthday. It will reflect our collective promise to continue working together to build Singapore’s future. I know I said that the Portraits of the People campaign will start from next month onwards. But in fact it will start right here today outside this hall. There is a photo booth outside where you take your self-portrait and start to contribute to our new Art Connector.

78. The Art Connector will be unveiled in November 2015 with a festive art carnival on the Padang, which coincides with the opening of the National Gallery.   

79. The Gallery’s art carnival will coincide with the launch of the Jubilee Walk – another key highlight in the SG50 calendar.

80. The Jubilee Walk is an 8-kilometre walking trail that will take you through the past, present and future of our Singapore Story. It will commemorate how we, an improbable nation, had come so far together despite the odds and thrived, by working together.

81. It will cover aspects of our national heritage and history: the National Museum, which showcases our transformation through the centuries, and the Fort Canning Park, which marks our early beginnings as a trading hub in the 14th century.

82. The Walk will continue on through the Civic Core, past the revamped Asian Civilisations Museum along the Singapore River, and the new National Gallery in front of the Padang. These monuments are rich with meaning as they have stood testament to our struggle for independence, survival, and progress.

83. The Walk will encompass the new Jubilee Bridge at Marina Bay and extend to Gardens by the Bay and Marina Barrage. These mark our rising quality of life, our resilience to crises, and our determination and aspirations to grow and build a sustainable and liveable city, in spite of our constraints.

84. The Walk will also feature some newly commissioned art works by local artists for the public to enjoy along the way. The works are currently being shortlisted after a recent open call and we will announce them when the results are available. They will be managed under the Public Art Trust.

85. To mark this new Jubilee Walk as well as the Jubilee Bridge, we will be organising a mass walk to officially launch the Jubilee Walk, in November 2015. 

86. So you can look forward to the Art Connector, the Jubilee Walk and the Jubilee Bridge. These are fitting tribute to celebrate our nation’s 50th birthday. They are physical landmarks that we can leave behind and we can remember for many more years to come.

Conclusion

87. It has been a busy and fruitful year for MCCY, and the next year looks to be even more so. I believe it will be a meaningful and fulfilling one too. We are energised and excited about the work ahead to be done, that will make a difference in our communities and will help to build a stronger and a more cohesive Singapore.

88. We want to partner more closely with all of you to achieve these ambitious goals in the areas I’ve described – in arts, in sports, in philanthropy and volunteerism, in youth engagement, in celebrating our shared national identity.

89. I am sure we will have many good conversations this evening about the work to be done. Let’s keep these conversations going throughout the next year as we work together for a better Singapore and a brighter future. Thank you.

Media Factsheet

• Art Connector & Portraits of the People Campaign [PDF, 1.0 MB]

• Jubilee Walk [PDF, 372 KB]