In its 35th year, the Singapore Arts Festival was too young for a mid-life crisis, but not too old to take a gap year. The festival took a break after its 2012 edition, and used this time for a period of reflection and intensive discussions amongst the artistic community, facilitated by the Arts Festival Review Committee.
We like to think the arts festival, now renamed the Singapore International Festival of Arts, or SIFA, has benefitted from this time off, beginning its next phase of life with new maturity and a greater degree of independence that comes with our corporatisation. The direction of the new Festival bears the mark of many intelligent and thoughtful conversations between the genuinely concerned minds of artists, arts managers and audiences.
I performed in the inaugural Arts Festival as a violinist in the Singapore Junior Orchestra and still remember the experience fondly. Later, the Festival became a biannual ritual: leafing through programmes, figuring out how to beat the queues at Victoria Theatre's box office and how to stretch one's paycheck to cover the extravagance. One year in the eighties I appeared in the papers for being the audience member to have seen the most Festival shows! For my friends and I, the Festival was like water in the desert, and it was only natural we made such devotional efforts in response.
In the Festival’s 37th year, we have grown not only an audience born of the Festival's impetus and the tutelage of other arts centres and festivals, such as the Esplanade, but also artists whom we are proud to propel onto the world stage. Our goal remains the same, even if the Festival is now just one element in a diverse and thriving arts scene: we want to re-ignite your single-minded passion for the arts.
– Lee Chor Lin (Arts House Limited CEO)
(Source: Arts House Limited Programme)