1.1 Purpose
The purpose of this reflection report is to obtain first hand information on how an event is run and managed. I have also made some criticism on the problems which surfaced during the commencement of the event. Appropriate recommendations, where applicable, will be addressed in the later part of this report.
1.2 Background
The Singapore Arts Festival is being celebrated every year over the last three decades. Since 1977, what was known as National Arts Festival previously has played a symbiotic and catalytic role in the development of the artistic and cultural life of Singapore.
Today, the Festival remains the largest singular event in Singapore’s arts calendar, inviting artists from more than 20 countries, offering more than 500 activities, and managed to attract a couple hundreds of thousands visitors locally or internationally.
Being the leading international arts festival in the region, the Singapore Arts Festival provides a platform for local artists to experiment a fusion of traditional and contemporary arts. It thus creates new artistic expressions in its fresh and exciting forms. Besides positioning Singapore as a vibrant global arts city, the National Arts Council, being the main organizer for most arts events, also hopes to liven up the streetscape. This is where the Singapore Arts Street 2008 comes into place, bringing the wildest yet creative form of arts such as Graffiti and Street Painting to live.
In the later part of this report, I will be focusing more specifically on the Singapore Arts Street 2008 @ Clarke Quay event which I have attended on Saturday, 14th June 2008, together with two of my classmates, Jenny and Jessica.
1.3 Methods of Investigation
First hand information is obtained through the observation that I did on-site. Research is also done through the internet to get online resources pertaining to the Festival event.
2 Findings / Observation
2.1 About the Organizer
Main Organizer: National Arts Council…
The main organizer for the Singapore Arts Festival as a whole is the National Arts Council, or NAC in short. Basically, NAC is a Statutory Board set up in September 1991 to monitor the growth and development of the arts in Singapore. Its vision is to develop Singapore as a distinctive global city for the arts while its mission is to nurture the arts and make it an integral part of the lives of the people of Singapore. By having a clear vision and mission of where it is heading, NAC is determined to build a vibrant arts sector by creating a conducive environment where the arts is accessible to all and artistic talents have the necessary resources and capabilities to excel and achieve sustainability in the long term.
For this reason, NAC has adopted the five strategic thrusts namely, the Nurture and Develop the Arts, Develop Capabilities and Resources, Stimulate Broader and More Sophisticated Demand for the Arts, Facilitate Internationalisation and Enhance Global Connectivity, and Advocate the Importance of the Arts. Refer to appendix A for more elaboration on these thrusts, extracted from NAC’s main website.
On top of that, the Council has adopted an arts cluster development approach, consisting of a team of dedicated and experienced officers to oversee on areas pertaining to performing, visual and literary art forms. This also helps enhance the relationship with the arts community, where artists and arts groups become NAC’s partners in carrying out the cluster development plan.
Organizer: Singapore Arts Street…
Besides NAC, another organizer in-charge particularly of the Singapore Arts Street 2008 @ Clarke Quay is none other than Singapore Arts Street itself. The whole event is being run by Ms. Juan Wong, the Event Director for the two-day event. Together with Jenny and Jessica, we managed to interview the friendly lady in between the performance interval. Despite her tight schedule, running around the place to ensure that everything goes according to their plan, she was nice enough to spare us a few minutes to answer our questions regarding the event.
Singapore Arts Street is actually an outdoor annual art event where there are various activities planned and served for the visitors. What makes this event unique is the fact that visitors are able to appreciate and try out various forms of arts, ranging from paintings and potteries to performances and live demonstrations to trying out Graffiti and Street Painting to art workshops for children, in a casual and fun setting.
This event also serves as a platform for artists to showcase their work to international and local visitors. In addition, the Singapore Arts Street hopes to look into ways to cultivate interests among the local community.
2.2 Roles of Events
There are basically five economic and tourism roles when we are talking about events. They are Place Marketing, Tourist Attractions, Image Maker, Catalyst and Animator. However I can only relate the Singapore Arts Street event to the first four roles of event.
The first role suggests that the event helps to create positive images, from the tourists’ view, towards the local community, the venue and destination generally, and on Singapore on a larger scale. An event is also believed to improve the quality of life of its people by balancing their work and personal life. By attending an event, it is hope that a person can take a break during the weekends from his hard days’ work while enjoying his leisure time together with his family and friends. Place marketing goes a step further by stating that an event is able to attract the residents who love arts and know how to appreciate them. At the same time, the success of an event is quoted to be the reason for investors to pump in money into the country. It is by logic that these people will only invest in the country if they are confident that major events like Singapore Arts Festival are able to generate large amount of money annually.
The next role of event would be the tourist attraction. Often the case people always relate a major event to being able to attract quality tourists. In the Singapore Arts Street context, quality tourists refer to those who love and appreciate arts and might have the high possibility of buying them. This type of tourists tends to extend their stay in Singapore too because of their deep passion towards arts that they feel that it is a must to continue to stay throughout the event until the festival ended. With longer stay, it would mean that they would spend more money in Singapore thus contributing to our economic growth.
Thirdly, the event plays a role of an image maker. The Singapore Arts Street event has adopted the theme of the event to be casual and fun, therefore creating the impression of how casual art can be. In addition, a marvelous and successful event can also help to combat negative perceptions of tourists who had previously encountered a bad experience in Singapore.
Lastly, an event can act as an animator. This is where the tourists who had a good experience from the event might probably repeat their visits to Singapore on a yearly basis just to catch up with the arts festival. They might even recommend Singapore as an ideal tourism destination to their families and friends, causing us to see an increase in the number of tourists coming to Singapore, thus contributing to the tourism receipts.
2.3 Its Stakeholders
The list below shows the different stakeholders which I have identified to be applicable for the Singapore Arts Street event in general, i.e. for Clarke Quay and Hougang Central Hub.
Stakeholders - Who are they?
Sponsors
· Clarke Quay
· North East Community Development Council
· Creative Hands
· Boon Musical Instrument Centre
· Lifewire.com.sg
Supporters (Government Agencies)
· Singapore Tourism Board
· National Arts Council
· People Association
· Aljunied Town Council
Volunteers
· Booth Vendors
· Performers such Tribalbeatz, Kae & Ayu, Kids Performing and Alan Extreme
· Art talents such as Khairul & Newa, Osman Asari, Chng Seok Ting, Rajinder Singh, Irene Hong and Jimmy Quek
Media Partners
· The Straits Times
· Lianhe Zaobao
· XIN.sg
· Channel 8
· Channel U
· Lush 99.5FM
· Channel NewsAsia
· Today
· Arts Beat
· The Finder
· Appetite Magazine
Web Portal and Blog Partners
· FARM.sg
· Singapore Etsy Team
· Singapore Kids Places
General Public
· Locals
· International visitors
On top of that, the Singapore Arts Street is held in Uniquely Singapore, as part of the arts event as well as the tourism attraction, and managed by CapitaLand.
2.4 Target Market
When asked about the target market, Ms. Juan, the Event Director said that they only target generally to the locals and tourists. She added that they will further target the specific groups but have yet to do so at that point of time. Only after a week or so after the event did they update their website to include local residents and families, expatriates and families, art lovers, art buyers, and tourists as their main target markets.
2.5 Marketing Strategies
As we know, all events take into considerations the 8’P’s’ of event marketing even though they may not use all the 8’P’s, namely Product, Place, Price, Promotion, Partnership, People, Packaging and Distribution, and Programming.
In the case of Singapore Arts Street 2008 @ Clarke Quay, the event’s product can be linked to programming. It refers to the total experience and what is offered at the event site itself. This include the items that have been lined up for the two whole afternoons such as the Italian Street Painting, Graffiti Xpression and Central Pitch Performances. However, I feel that the event suffer from a little product orientation. In layman terms, it refers to the situation whereby the organizer is too focus on how the program would go about, forgetting to consider if the audience did enjoy themselves there. That is just how I felt when I was there.
The place of the event would be at the Central Fountain Square, such that it is located at the heart of Clarke Quay. The distribution of the products is being distributed within the location itself. It is a very compact event indeed.
As for the price component, the event is an open concept with free admission fee. The organizer(s) only need to consider factors like time, travel cost and lost opportunities as such to determine the pricing of its merchandize products but generally I find that the prices of all the goods that were displayed are reasonable.
Due to budget constraints, Singapore Arts Street is promoted through internet, either on its website, www.singapopreartsstreet.com or from the vendors’ website such as FARM.sg which has been discussed earlier on. Another way to promote the awareness of the event is by inviting various media to write an article on it. Interestingly, I found out that the organizer did advertise the event through television channels and radio stations but frankly I did not see or hear about it before.
Lastly, the people factor for the marketing strategies include the artists, performers and the vendors who make the whole event happen. Seriously I find no connection between the performers and the audience which makes it seem like the performers just do what they are good at, and get over and done with. I also do think that the vendors there are not putting in their best effort to get the visitors to patron their booths. It is sad and pathetic to see all the pretty artworks and handicrafts being displayed while the vendors just sit around there and not promoting their own products.
2.6 Event Rating
Frankly, I would rate the organization of the event to be just fair because from my observation when I was there, there were many flaws to the event. It seems like the whole event is not planned properly because all the performances are behind schedule and that irritates me the most, to be having to wait for 15 minutes or so in between every performance. There is no coordination among the performers and the show just did not go on smoothly.
The vendors are also part of the reason why I am dissatisfied with the whole event. They show very minimal effort to promote their products, causing the enthusiasm for a visitor who rarely goes to an event, like me, to die off instantly. Also, Singapore Arts Street event suffers from a slow traffic which comes to show that the organizer fail to make use of its marketing mix to its own advantage.
2.7 The Potential of Singapore Arts Street
I believe that the Singapore Arts Street 2008 @ Clarke Quay event shows the least potential to meet tourist demand among the other events of the Singapore Arts Festival. Gauging from the crowd on the day of my observation, I notice that the event is unable to attract tourism. Moreover, the products, though beautifully crafted or made, are not enticing enough to make the tourists want to buy them. I find that the products sold there have no synonyms identification to either our heritage or culture, for tourists to buy those as souvenirs. Also, I think that the location of the event is not strategic because according the Ms. Juan, the Event Director, even the vendors had a hard time looking for the right location to set up their booths initially, let alone the visitors especially the tourists. There are not much facilities or products offered around the event, except for the many bistros and bars lined up in the streets to meet the needs of the tourists. Therefore, it is not able to meet to the wide range of tourists’ demand.
2.8 Aligning Value of Event
The value of the event could be raised to be aligned with the tourism mission i.e. ‘We develop and champion tourism, so as to build the sector into a key driver of economic growth for Singapore’ if it was able to attract the mass and getting the public to be actively involve in its event. In doing so, the event organizer must first look into the venue that it has chosen for the event to be held at. This is the most basic step in order to determine the success or failure of the event. In addition, the organizer may want to step up its marketing efforts to include banners around the area to create awareness among the visitors there. The public must also be inform on how tourism can contribute to the country’s economic growth and how they can do their part to help promote Singapore an the art and entertainment hub. From my research, I found that Singapore now is looking forward to year 2015, where she aims to be a destination of choice, a powerful tourism hub attracting visitors, businesses and talents from across the world. Therefore, event such as Singapore Arts Street can soon rise to its standard and able to boosts the local artistic talents on a larger scale.
3 Conclusion
In conclusion, I find the event rather boring and disorganized. Being my first time watching such event, I think I would not want to come again for the second time. I know it is easier to be said than done. I am fully aware of the event organizer's responsibilities and the many considerations that they need to review in the planning stage. Nevertheless, I hope something could be done in future to improve the current event.
