NEW ANNOUNCEMENTS FOR THE HERITAGE SECTOR IN 2021

Enhanced Arts and Culture Resilience Package Announced by MCCY at Budget 2021

The ACRP was part of the Resilience Budget launched in March 2020, and has helped arts and culture organisations tide over the pandemic. The sector continues to face challenges even as Singapore gradually reopens and in-person activities gradually resume. The ACRP will be enhanced by $20 million to continue supporting arts and culture organisations.

The enhancement will cover the following new grant for NHB:

[NEW] Organisation Transformation Grant

A new Organisation Transformation Grant (OTG) (formerly known as the Business Transformation Grant) will be introduced to support grounds-up interests by heritage organisations to support both the digital and non-digital aspects of business transformation. The OTG will provide a grant quantum of up to $30,000 per project for company-specific business transformation efforts.

Interested organisations may click here for the application form, and the links below for the application guidelines and details.

Additional Resources

For more information on various support schemes available, please visit https://supportgowhere.life.gov.sg/
For information on the Jobs Support Scheme (JSS), please visit https://go.gov.sg/jss
For information on the Covid Recovery Scheme (CRG), please visit https://www.msf.gov.sg/assistance/Pages/covid-recovery-grant.aspx
For opportunities to volunteer please visit https://www.giving.sg/home or the National Council of Social Service (NCSS)to find out how you can join causes or start your own to support groups in need.

If you have any queries regarding these two grants, please email the relevant contacts below:

Arts organisations	nac_feedback@nac.gov.sg
Heritage organisations	nhb_feedback@nhb.gov.sg

Launch of an Arts and Culture Digital Roadmap

COVID-19 has accelerated the digitalisation of the arts and culture sector. To better support the sector, the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth (MCCY), National Arts Council (NAC) and NHB will develop the Arts and Culture Digital Roadmap with stakeholders. The Roadmap will guide arts and culture organisations in their digitalisation journey, provide a framework for the adoption of digital solutions to improve operational productivity and enhance audience experiences, and serve as a one-stop directory of relevant government grants and schemes.

Celebrating Heritage Milestones

2021 marks the 50th anniversary of the promulgation of the Preservation of Monuments Act. NHB will mark this milestone through a series of public programmes, tours, webinars, and a travelling exhibition. National Monuments, including the former Istana Kampong Gelam, the main building of the Istana, the National Museum of Singapore, and the former Empress Place Building, will undergo restoration.

NHB will also be celebrating the 25th anniversary of Museum Roundtable, a collective of public and private museums in Singapore. The year-long celebration will be anchored by two key programmes. A series of museum tours will be conducted during the weekends in May and June 2021 to explore lesser-known museums in Singapore. A family-friendly travelling exhibition will be held at various Museum Roundtable museums and public spaces in November 2021.

Protecting and Promoting our Intangible Cultural Heritage

After the successful inscription of Hawker Culture, NHB will conduct a series of focus group sessions with stakeholders from diverse backgrounds in 2021 to identify potential future Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) elements to be nominated for UNESCO’s Representative List of ICH of Humanity. Singaporeans will be invited to share their feedback on the shortlist. More details on the engagements will be available at a later date.

Rejuvenating and Improving our Museums

The Changi Chapel and Museum, and Reflections at Bukit Chandu will reopen in mid-2021 and the second half of 2021 respectively. The reopening of these two World War II interpretive sites is timely as we will mark the 80th anniversary of the Fall of Singapore in 2022.

The Malay Heritage Centre will be closed for redevelopment in early 2022.

The Singapore Philatelic Museum will reopen as Singapore’s first dedicated children’s museum in 2022.

Peranakan Museum will reopen in the first quarter of 2023 with refreshed offerings.

Public Call for Artefacts and Stories

As part of the development of the Founders’ Memorial, NHB will launch a public call for artefacts and stories related to key milestones in Singapore’s independence history and founding values later this year. This complements existing efforts, such as the National Museum of Singapore’s Collecting Contemporary Singapore initiative, to invite more people to contribute objects and share their stories. The National Museum of Singapore will be extending its call for contributions of objects and stories for Collecting Contemporary Singapore until June 2021.

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2021