The Singapore Art Festival

Introduction

The event that I have selected is the event called Sutra during the Singapore Arts Festival.

It is a performance by the monks from the orginal Shaolin Temple situated near Songshan Mountain and Dengfeng City in Henan Province, China. The monks are aged between 12 and 26, these 20 Buddhist warriors perform Sutra with breathtaking sequences of enthralling and hypnotic moves.

It uses the Gormley’s striking design of 21 wooden boxes, embodying the Buddhist concept of the body as both vector of energy and as delimited space which provides a compelling and ever-changing onstage environment for the performers.

Sutra is a modern day idea of developing the body as a means of cultivating the mind for spiritual awakening which consist of the Cherkoui’s religious dances and the philosophy of Shaolin kung-fu. The whole performance is choreographed by the celebrated Flemish-Moroccan choreographer, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. The whole routine of the performance is inspired by the skill, strength and spirituality of Buddhist Shaolin monks in Sutra. Sutra is a very good example of the collaboration between Western artists and Shaolin Temple.

Compare the selected festival with a similar festival that has been successful in another city in terms of its marketing strategy.

I have selected to compare the Singapore Arts Festival with the Hong Kong Arts Festival. The Hong Kong Arts Festival is very similar to our Singapore Arts Festival. Both festival aims to bring dance, music, theatre and art to the people that appreciates art and learning about art so that they will have more knowledge about arts through this festival.

The Hong Kong Arts Festival is held from 6 February 2009 to 8 March 2009; where as the Singapore Arts Festival is held from 15 May 2009 to 14 June 2009. The Hong Kong and Singapore market their Arts Festival is pretty similar.

• Product

The name of the festival is Arts Festival, so as the name implies, the core product here will be the arts, music, dances and theatre performances people get when they are at the art festival.

• Place

The places Singapore held their art festival is at Vivo City, Marina Barrage, Esplanade, Singapore Art Museum, National Museum of Singapore, Victoria Theatre, Merlion Park and many more.

Whereas for the Hong Kong Art Festival, it will take place in the city of Hong Kong are Grand Theatre, Hong Kong Cultural Center, Fringe Studio, Lyric Theatre and the Drama Theatre, and Hong Kong City Hall.

• Programming

The programming of both countries’ art festival is pretty similar. Singapore Art Festival consists of dance, music, theatre performances and visual arts.

As for Hong Kong, they showcase dance, theatre performances and music. The only difference in programs between Hong Kong and Singapore is that Hong Kong offers opera and performances for the family so that kids will get to enjoy the Hong Kong Art Festival too.

• Partnership

The Singapore Art Festival had partnerships from organizations like the Singapore Tourism Board, Tote Board, Singapore Turf Club and the Shaw Foundation. Singapore chose to have partnership with these organizations because they are able to help promote the Singapore Art Festival to the people and will benefit the National Art Council in making this festival a successful one.

The Hong Kong Art Festival had partnerships from organizations like the Hong Kong Tourism Board together with other smaller companies.

• Packaging and Distribution

Both the Singapore Art Festival and Hong Kong Art festival sell their tickets online or by phone calls via credit card payments. Tickets are also available at the door but the chances of getting good seats and all is tough. Plus the fact that the art festival is very well liked by the masses, some performances do not even sell their tickets at the door as all of the tickets is sold out before the performance.

In Singapore, Sistic authorized agents also sell tickets to the art festival’s performances so that people who are less technology savvy can get their tickets at one of the Sistic outlet.

• People

The people who are involved in the art festival are definitely art lovers, families, students, the service crew, the performers and many more.

Both Singapore and Hong Kong is successful in marketing their Arts Festival because the response they received from the people was good.

One of the best practices is the promotion of the festival. The various forms of promotion of the art festival is bus stop advertisements, mass media, radio stations, the internet, restaurants, bars, shopping centers, hotels, magazines, newspapers and many more. They also sent emails to those people who bought their tickets online for the Singapore Art Festival 2008 as most of them are likely to return on 2009’s art festival.

Lastly, it is the price of the tickets. The price of the tickets is fairly reasonable as it is cheap and several sessions is available. The price of a ticket is ranging from $20-$80 on average, which is pretty affordable.

Identify the stakeholders in these festivals.

Examples of stakeholders are the host organization, host community, sponsor, media, co-workers, and participants and spectators.

Host organization refers to the main organization in charged of the whole festival, planning and making it happen. In this case, the host organization is actually the National Arts Council.

Host community refers to the community that helped to deliver the whole festival.

Sponsor will be to have sponsorship with organizations to provide and promote the Singapore Art Festival with the resources and attention. Example of sponsors is all on the picture showed above.

Media will be Channel 5, Okto and several other small media advertising companies.

Co-workers will refer to the crew on the festival that works in the festival to help make everything happen.

Participants and spectators will be the crowd going for and watching the art festival. For a festival like this, it will usually attract lots of attention from the people.

Purpose of the festival

The main purpose of the Singapore Arts Festival is to celebrate the local arts activities of Singapore’s diverse communities and to help develop the artistic and cultural life of Singapore. Through the years, the Singapore Arts Festival has transformed the city’s cultural landscape into one of Asia’s greatest cultural we can find today. It is also to help and encourage regional and international artistic exchanges and collaborations to come up with new and better performances to attract the people.

The Singapore Arts Festival is happening every year to let people who appreciate the arts to come together and enjoy every moment of the performance and festival. It is also to help spread the word of art to those who have yet been to the esplanade or those who do not like art to experience it for at least once in their life so that they can learn more about our country’s culture and see more of the artistic side of Singapore.

Those performers and artists can also promote their art and performance through this art festival to people who appreciates it so that they will know where they stand and be motivated to come up with a new and better performance next time round for the art lovers.

The amount of tourism benefits received by the host city of the chosen festival.

The amount of tourism benefits received by the host city of the chosen event is a lot. This is because Singapore not only attracts locals to enjoy the arts, music and dance, but also people from all over the world. This is because certain performance is only available in Singapore Arts Festival, therefore supporters and people who appreciate the performance will fly over from their own country to Singapore to watch the performance.

This will help Singapore generate more tourism receipts because those tourists who come over to Singapore to watch the performance will also spend money on food and beverage, entertainment, lodging and transport. This will affect the many sectors of Singapore’s economy in terms of the tourist’s expenses in Singapore.

The Singapore Art Festival also helped to promote certain attractions in Singapore like the Marina Barrage. Many people have heard about the Marina Barrage but they do not know exactly what it is and how does it look like from the inside. Through the Singapore Art Festival, more and more people learn about the Marina Barrage as certain performances took place over there, at the barrage.

The blocks(stage) is the ever changing stage that the monks use.

Changing the formation.

Displaying their skills.

Opening up like a flower.

Duel

Dead or alive.

Looking like lost souls.

From this picture, we can actually see the live band playing at the background of this picture.

Domino?

The power of lighting.

This picture here showed a very clear view of the live band that is playing the background music of the performance at the background of this photo.

The end of the performance.

The live band.

The end.

All in all, I enjoyed the the whole performance that is delivered.
It was a wonderful experience and a eyeopener to see Western artist collaborating with Shaolin monks to put on such a artistic work of art.