Government Allocates $20 Million for New Multicultural Arts Programme Grant

​

The government will allocate $20 million to launch a new grant scheme that will support artists and arts groups over the next five years to develop and present projects that bring together different cultural traditions. The initiative aims to deepen Singaporeans’ understanding and appreciation of cross-cultural art forms.

Senior Parliamentary Secretary for Transport and for Culture, Community and Youth, Baey Yam Keng, announced the initiative on Thursday (March 5) during the Committee of Supply debate on the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth’s budget in Parliament.

​

The Multicultural Arts Programme Grant will be jointly funded by MCCY and the President’s Challenge, and administered by the National Arts Council. The grant is expected to be launched in the coming months, with further details to be announced later.

​

The new grant scheme will support artists and arts groups in creating high-quality cross-cultural works.

Such works may include projects created through collaboration between cross-cultural arts practitioners that showcase Singapore’s diverse cultural traditions and distinctive local characteristics, or collaborations between local and regional artists that reflect cultural exchanges between Singapore and the region. These works may be presented at major professional venues such as the Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay, Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre, or Victoria Theatre.

Artists may also apply for funding to organise activities that strengthen Singapore’s multicultural arts ecosystem. These activities may include artist residencies, symposiums, youth mentorship programmes, as well as research and documentation projects related to local multicultural practices.

​

Local musician Felix Phang is the founder of the non-profit intercultural arts organisation Pasat Merdu. In an interview, he said that Singapore sits at a unique crossroads of Southeast Asia’s diverse cultures, inheriting Chinese, Malay, Indian and Eurasian cultural traditions, while also maintaining strong connections with regional countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Cambodia.

​

Phang, who is also a visiting lecturer at LASALLE College of the Arts, observed that the musical traditions of Singapore’s different ethnic communities have been shaped by the country’s unique social and cultural environment. As a result, they have developed distinct local characteristics, different from similar traditions found elsewhere in Southeast Asia, and therefore merit deeper research.

​

At the same time, he noted that regional countries possess complex and diverse cultural landscapes, and that there is strong potential for local and regional artists to develop platforms for cultural exchange.

With the new grant supporting multicultural arts, he expressed interest in exploring various initiatives, including composer development programmes, long-term intercultural collaboration platforms, and strengthening knowledge-sharing through documentation and archival work. He is also interested in developing projects that strengthen connections between artists in Singapore and Southeast Asia.

​

He added:

“Multiculturalism in the arts should not simply be about aesthetic blending or superficial collaboration. It should involve consciously building connections and trust between cultures, and presenting the work through structures that emerge from deep exploration.”

​

Baey Yam Keng said the new grant will support artists and projects that integrate different cultures, traditions, and disciplines, including artists who incorporate multicultural elements meaningfully in their work or who intentionally seek to learn and engage with artistic forms from other cultures.

MCCY hopes that these works will deepen public appreciation of Singapore’s multicultural arts, strengthen social cohesion through shared cultural experiences, and reinforce multiculturalism as a core element of Singaporean identity.