The Singaporean Arts Scene is Straining, and Something’s Gotta Give

The recent SG Culture Pass was a much-needed respite for Singapore’s arts industry. However, in a sector where one in two practitioners is self-employed, the current funding infrastructure—and, indeed, the work done by the arts industry itself— might need to be rethought for it to be sustainable amidst current economic pressures.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article are the writer’s own and are not representative of MAJU’s views. While we make every effort to ensure that the information shared is accurate, we welcome any comments, suggestions, or corrections of errors.

Acknowledgments: MAJU would also like to thank Buds Youth Theatre for inviting MAJU members to attend their showcase and to learn about the youth theatre scene.

Credits to Unsplash (Unsplash: Sharmaine Tan) https://unsplash.com/photos/pink-flowers-near-white-concrete-building-during-daytime-SJ9-V_1Avf8

How much do you think a two-hour theatre production should cost, in an age where you can type out a sentence into an AI engine and get a fully rendered video in minutes? 

When Working Title Productions, a collective of university students, staged their debut production of The Importance of Being Earnest, they found out the answer: thousands of dollars in production and venue costs, from buying the set, purchasing the props, and booking a venue for the production.

Traditional art forms, like theatre, compete with short-form and AI-generated content for our attention in an algorithm-driven attention economy. Yet they remain effort-intensive, requiring much more money, manpower and time.

The kicker? The thousands of dollars Working Title needed were paid out-of-pocket and upfront, with costs only partially reimbursed at the end of the production through a grant, Deepa, Artistic Director of Working Title, said.

Deepa spoke with me after their electrically-charged performance at the ASEAN Youth Theatre Festival, a showcase of young artists tackling mental health through theatre.

Yet Working Title can be considered one of the luckier arts collectives, especially in the wake of bad news from Singapore’s arts industry— most prominently the closure of The Projector, which recently sparked discourse about how spaces dedicated to the arts are expected to operate as profit-making entities amidst "the worst consumer market conditions in a decade". 

Not every arts production receives a grant, and coupled with the lingering social and economic effects of the pandemic, the local arts industry seems to be slowly buckling. Add in artists’ fears that AI-generated content is muscling in on an already shrinking patch of turf, and it’s not hard to see why many in Singapore’s arts community are worried for its future.

Why is the Arts Industry Uniquely Vulnerable?

The first reason is funding. 

Government grants, while invaluable, only disburse part of a production’s operating budget. For small organisations, which comprise 90 per cent of Singapore’s arts ecosystem, the two most accessible grants are the Presentation and Participation (P&P) Grant and the Tote Board Arts Fund, both managed by the National Arts Council (NAC). These offer up to 70 per cent and 50 per cent project cost funding respectively. Hence, even if they manage to secure a grant, every production still requires enough capital to cover production and operating costs. This can hamper the ability of smaller organisations to break even, much less remain profitable. 

Donations from the public can help to plug the gaps, but donations to the arts account for less than 2 per cent of overall donations). Even with schemes like the Cultural Matching Fund, where the government matches private donations to eligible arts charities dollar-for-dollar, the arts are often overlooked by institutional philanthropy and corporate donors. Small organisations also have less access to established donor networks than the larger arts institutions, so what is donated often doesn’t reach them.

Part of the problem is perceptual: that the arts are an indulgence for the privileged, rather than an essential need – especially compared to other seemingly more worthy causes like food security or elder care. 

The second issue, which exacerbates funding concerns, is the tendency of performing arts organisations to be relegated to freelance or “gig economy” employment due to the project-based nature of their operations and funding. 

As the Ministry of Culture, Community, and Youth  describes, about one in two arts and culture practitioners is self-employed. The NAC provides an estimation that one in three professionals in the arts operate as Self-Employed Persons (SEPs), and also cites volatile income flows and job instability as drawbacks.

Most arts organisations are paid on a project basis (through project grants or ticket sales), instead of via stable, full-time funding — even if they dedicate similar hours in preparation and rehearsal. It is therefore common for professionals in the industry to be paid on a freelance/project basis too, with a transition to full-time employment difficult for most small organisations. 

This affects the sustainability of arts organisations. As Channel News Asia reports, many professionals crucial to the performing arts industry, from production managers to stage managers, have left for sectors like events, drawn by salary increases of at least 30 per cent. This reduces organisational stability and capacity, hampering efforts to upskill, train new talent and plan for the long term.

The last issue is demand. Singapore’s appetite for its own arts industry may simply not be enough to sustain it. After the pandemic, demand has recovered slowly and has yet to return to pre-pandemic highs — in 2022, SISTIC sold only 60 per cent of the tickets they did in 2019. As a small domestic market, this faltering demand may reflect limited awareness or appreciation for our local arts industry.  

“It was published that (over 70 per cent of School of The Arts (SOTA) students don’t end up in arts-related university courses),” Hazar Roshan, who wrote the piece Working Title performed, told me. But he identified a key issue: “because when you evaluate art through the lens of sustainability, many people are not going to do it as a career…you have to cultivate a culture that values and enjoys the arts.”

Cultivating this mindset shift is easier said than done. NAC’s Population Survey of the Arts describes a kind of societal bystander effect: Singaporeans acknowledge the importance of art but do little to engage with or promote it. Three-quarters of those surveyed agreed that the arts and culture benefit our community, country and quality of life, yet personal interest in the arts hovers at around 34 per cent, and only three in ten people consume local arts content. 

Why Should Engagement with the Arts be Encouraged?

It is very Singaporean to focus on practical benefits when deciding whether we should care about something. As a result, the arts are often seen as frivolous, impractical, and unnecessary. 

However, the practical value of art shouldn’t be discounted. There are many reasons why preserving and engaging with the arts matter to national identity and our existence as a diverse society. Investment in the arts has also been shown to be beneficial from a policymaking and personal perspective.

The arts have a way of bringing the issues people care most about to light, bringing policymakers into the day-to-day concerns of citizens. At the ASEAN Youth Theatre Festival, plays showcased by secondary school students explored the perennial issue of social and academic stressors impacting mental health. Working Title’s piece focused on the rise of AI, highlighting themes like data security and the unhealthy emotional relationships users can form with AI — themes which resonated strongly with the audience. 

That communication can also be two-way. Amelia from Tanjong Katong Girls’ School shared with me how secondary schoolers sometimes have problems understanding the priorities and perspectives of the Government, and vice-versa. But, she added, “a medium such as art, whether it’s drama or something else, can bring out a sense of understanding between us.”

The arts can be an effective vehicle for policy design and engagement, making complex or divisive issues more accessible and inclusive. 

Engaging with art, whether through drama, music or dance, can also improve mental health and wellbeing, as numerous studies and papers have shown. 

A study by Ipsos in 2023 showed that 46 per cent of Singaporeans polled considered mental health the biggest health problem we face, with stress ranking third at 35 per cent. With mental health becoming an increasingly relevant concern, low barrier methods to destress and protect our mental well-being are more vital than ever. As Hazar shared with me, theatre could be an especially useful example of this. It is suited for tackling difficult or niche issues, making it an effective way to broach the issue of mental well-being, and most secondary and tertiary schools offer drama as a co-curricular. Investment in them could serve as a strategic lever to support public health, potentially reducing the burden on our healthcare systems. 

Now What?

Our actions in this generation may well determine whether our arts and cultural heritage will survive in the next. From conversations with members of the performing arts community, measures like the SG Culture Pass are much appreciated, but more can be done to strengthen existing frameworks.

Given that so many practising members of the arts are self-employed or work on a project basis, it may help to target policies towards two different groups: those who consider it their main occupation, and those who practise it on the side, on top of existing full-time employment. 

As an example, Germany classifies artists as freelance workers for social insurance. For art to be considered a “primary occupation”, artists have to earn €3,900/year from artistic/journalistic self-employment. To be considered a “Side-job”, artists have to work less than or equal to18 hours per week as noted in practice guidance. In Singapore, the definition of full-time employment under the Employment Act (generally 35 hours or more per week) could similarly be used to differentiate artists. 

Many people who practise the arts nowadays do not do it as a traditional full-time job, often for valid reasons. That should not make their contributions less valuable. We should encourage those who still want to continue on a part-time or project basis, especially if it benefits the community. 

Many small-scale projects genuinely require funding in the sub-$10,000 amount, but end up competing with mid-to-large-scale productions when applying for comparatively accessible grants, like the Tote Board Fund and P&P Grant. While the two aforementioned grants can offer sub-$10,000 funding, they do so on a percentage basis (50 per cent and 70 per cent of total budget, capped at $60,000 and $50,000 respectively). 

One option is to offer micro-grants, in the under-$10,000 range, to help practitioners start small-scale projects on the side. There is precedence for creating a separate micro-grant category and offering claimants a lighter administrative requirement, as the two existing grants also have administratively lighter requirements if the awarded amount is below $10,000 (requiring “only” a financial report and evaluation, compared to the certified accounts by a registered accountant required for amounts above $10,000.) This may be useful to small collectives without a dedicated in-house accountant. 

Thus, the creation of this dedicated “micro-grant” category for sub-$10,000 grants, where budgets under $10,000 may be claimed in full as a flat amount granted, could allow a higher funding percentage for very small projects.

While percentage-based funding is reasonable for larger organisations with more experience and more resources (they may be able to secure the remaining 30-50 per cent through ticket sales from wider audience bases, for example), many entry-level productions may end up paying out-of-pocket or relying on unpaid labour, which may make practising art on the side undesirable when combined with the time-consuming nature of staging productions.

Partial upfront disbursement — subject to proof of feasibility and intent to stage the production — could further ease the funding bottleneck for newcomers. Working Title Productions, for instance, received the Young ChangeMakers Grant (up to $3k to $5k) to facilitate a previous production; similar arts-focused grants could help cultivate new talent. 

On a symbolic level, positioning micro-grants as entry-level support would acknowledge the extra effort “side-job” artists put in and lower the barrier to joining Singapore’s arts scene. 

The scheme could also have a community-building element: for example, requiring recipients to hold a free concert or workshop at a community club, thereby enhancing public access to the arts while strengthening grassroots cultural ecosystems.

For those who wish to work in arts-related industries full-time, teaching the arts is often cited as a viable pathway. Government-supported upskilling or matching programmes could help shuttle artists into education careers, including full-time roles at institutions like SOTA, National Institute of Education, or LASALLE, rather than purely contract positions.

More arts companies could be added to established donor networks and platforms, like the ImpactCollab program managed by Asian Venture Philanthropy Network, or the Majurity Trust. Companies keen to support arts organisations through their Corporate Social Responsibility programs might look at intermediaries like The Foundation for the Arts and Social Enterprise. More consistent funding would go a long way toward making full-time performing arts work sustainable over the long term.

Most importantly, however, there should be a shift in how Singaporeans perceive and value art. Nearly every artist I spoke to raised this point. A persistent stigma surrounds the arts. Pursuing the arts in Singapore is often derided as a “waste of time”; if benchmarked solely against other full-time careers like finance or medicine on a salary basis, it is easy to see why.

But the arts should be engaged with and appreciated for their own sake, not purely for their viability — or lack thereof — as a career option. Imagine that every time you cooked something, someone reminded you there was no point in becoming a professional chef. That the chances of success in the food industry are low, and that cooking is obsolete when food delivery apps exist. It sounds ridiculous, and yet we often talk about the arts in a similar way.

Aside from active derision, the aforementioned bystander syndrome can be just as harmful. When we assume that the arts are exclusively a luxury for those with spare money and time, rather than an essential human need that can be cultivated within the community, we place them out of reach– there will always be something more practical, more worthy of our individual time and effort.

That leads us to assume that someone else will ensure that our arts industry survives. That someone else will fund the projects, that someone else will care even if we don’t. And those assumptions may ensure that the arts in Singapore continue to struggle.

Then again, if we’re heading towards a world where the arts may no longer be viable as a full-time career in the way they used to be, maybe that could be a good thing. 

Freed from the shackles of having to prove their monetary value, the arts might find new value as a tool for good and for all. Drama lessons might be used as a tool in Character Education lessons, giving students language to express their lived experiences; art therapy could equip people with skills to take charge of their mental health. 

The arts will always have a place, as long as humans walk the earth. But our actions will determine the state they’ll survive in.

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About the Author: Clairre is a Mass Communications graduate interested in politics, policy, and issues on the ground— when she’s not enjoying a nap.

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