Presenting Culture and Nationhood: The Singapore Arts Festival

This book chapter looks at the cultural history of the Singapore Arts Festival from 1959 to 2017. It studies the role of the arts festival in nation building and the formation of Singapore's cultural identity as a multicultural and multiethnic enterprise. Through a close study of key moments, the chapter establishes the relationship between state enterprise and cultural rootedness, and social access and political agency as key engines of artistic development in postcolonial Singapore.
Citation:
Purushothaman, Venka. "Presenting Culture and Nationhood: The Singapore Arts Festival.” The State and the Arts in Singapore, edited by Terence Chong, World Scientific, 2018, pp. 67-107.