The Singapore Prize is an annual art competition awarded to secondary school students submitting outstanding works of art. This year’s contest includes participants from Bahrain, Chester, Gibraltar, Hong Kong, Malta London and Isle of Man as well as Singapore.
Government prizes are presented by Singapore to recognize Singaporeans who have made outstanding contributions to society, with each recipient receiving a medallion and certificate; some even receive state decorations in recognition of their work. These awards form part of an overall programme designed to recognize achievements and contributions across different fields by Singaporeans.
This year, 17 writers, translators, and comic artists from four languages were honored with the Singapore Literature Prize in each language. Of those honored was Jeremy Tiang who won best English translation for Zhang Yueran’s Cocoon (2022). This self-published novella tells of two childhood friends trying to come to terms with past secrets while facing Cultural Revolution-induced turmoil in their lives.
Clara Chow was one of several first-time winners, winning both English fiction and creative nonfiction categories with her short story cycle Nine Yard Sarees. These tales explore the complex relationships among an Indian family scattered among Singapore, Sydney and New York. For consumer choice category votes alone over 4,000 readers participated, approximately double that from 2020 survey; each had to select their favorite works from a list of shortlisted titles in all categories and languages.
At its 30th year, this program established in 1992 and operating four languages since 2004 has adopted an important theme: how literature can spark emotions and memories. According to organizers, this choice of theme was partly in response to the current coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic.
Singapore is home to an expansive and dynamic philanthropic community, from large donations to micro grants. While this diversity makes Singapore an excellent location for donors looking to have an impactful impact in the arts, it also presents challenges when trying to identify the most effective grantmakers for various sectors and geographical areas. To address this, Grantmakers for the Arts’ annual Singapore Philanthropy Report will be revised this year in order to better reflect philanthropy landscape in Singapore – specifically private giving (excluding government affiliated grantmakers ), while adopting an updated and robust approach data collection methodology.
This year’s report has been revised to broaden its coverage, including more local philanthropy and drawing upon fresh sources of data on Singapore’s art ecosystem. As before, this edition will continue to highlight major trends and themes within philanthropy and art in Singapore as well as profiling funders across its city-state. Furthermore, a comprehensive ranking of philanthropic organisations based on data such as grant disbursement/expenditure will also be included – read about this update here; its publication date will be October 2019