Sunday, June 21, 2009

Comment on the amount of tourism benefits received by the host city of the chosen event

~BENEFITS~

It is definite that Singapore has received much tourism benefit from Singapore Arts Festival. Pumping an extraodinary amount of $6.5-7 Million despite the crisis, it is obvious that the Arts council would not hold the event in the same massive scale, if they do not expect the return to be more.


Since the statistics for tourists receipts for the month of June and May is not up yet, we will be using the statistics on the year 2007. In 2007, Singapore Arts Festival happened on 25th May to 24th June. In this 2 months, Singapore received tourism receipt of around 821, 248 tourists, while June sees 850,514 visitors. The numbers alone shows that during the main month of the Festival (June), there is an increase of tourism receipt by around 29,000 tourists. Therefore, we can safely say that the Festival has helped to boost the amount of tourist visit to Singapore.

With this, it can be seen that Singapore has used the Festival to promote itself as the preferred tourism destination for the month of June. Since the event is a large event comprising of International talents, there has also been media coverage of the festival in different countries, showing Singapore's power to the world, the festivity and the attractiveness that it held.
It should be noted that the festival has made some tourists to extend their stay. For a young aspiring Indonesian Artists, Ms.Lienny, who first touched the festival feel during her trip to Vivo, the RED event that she saw has made her decide to extend her stay to see other events.

With the increasing tourists visit and extended length of exisiting tourists in Singapore, we should also consider the amount of profit that the local community will benefit from and the increased tax revenue that the country will enjoy. It is obvious that event companies who is engaged in staging the event will earn much from it, but the suppliers of food, accomodation for visitors and shopping industries will also benefit. It is all a domino effect, boosting internal industries througout Singapore.

The festival not only gives more money to the community, it also creates enterpreunership opportunity and jobs for the people. For Ms. Liu Xing, a student from Ngee Ann Polytechnic, it has been difficult to get any part-time jobs for the past months due to the credit crunch. However, the festival has gave her the job and the salary that she needs.(Her job was to survey people regarding the festival, as seen on the right)

Permanent companies would seek permanent workers, but for an annual event such as this, sudden need for employment will arise.

Of course, the festival may cause inflation in the economy, but paired with the Great Singapore Sale, also happening in June and ending in July, inflation should not be a problem that the locals will face due to the festival.

REFLECTION on Festival's main purpose

SINGAPORE ARTS FESTIVAL'S MAIN PURPOSE

Quoting from the speech Mr Lee Suan Hiang, Chief Executive Officer, National Arts Council gave on The Parliament, (NAC), "The Singapore Arts Festival's Outreach Programme is designed to reach out to the whole spectrum of the Singapore population. As Singapore’s pinnacle arts event, the Festival aims to meet three objectives. Firstly, for our performing arts talents and industry, the Festival promotes artistic development and excellence. This is done by commissioning new works by our artistic talents and forging international artistic collaborations. Secondly, for the audience, the Festival promotes wider and deeper appreciation for the arts. It offers a broad range of enjoyable and appreciated free outreach programmes in the city and the heartlands, as well as a core programme of ticketed shows which includes new works and some cutting edge performances. Thirdly, to position Singapore as a global arts city, the Festival seeks to raise international awareness of Singapore arts by developing strong partnerships with foreign art festivals and creating an international profile synonymous with artistic innovation.



The Singapore Arts Festival had definitely meet those 3 objectives. Art is something that is considered beautiful-that was what my secondary school Arts Teacher told us once before. All of us are the same and yet different in some ways, it can be our thoughts, mindset or culture. Each country has a different culture in which it bases its artforms from and the further we are from that country, the more different our customs are. By holding such an integrated art event in Singapore, it is definite that both non-artists and artists will be able to look at the term "beauty" in a different way. I believe that the Singapore Arts Festival would impact how anyone sees arts, be it foreigners or locals.

There was a saying that we only look twice if someone is very ugly or very beautiful. Yet during the RED Special Event, majority of the passer-by looks twice, and the performance was definitely not ugly.


What about the Transport Exceptionnels? Can romance be only between animals? What about non-living things? I know there are commotions about this, like about the possibility that people might fall for robots when they are invented, but what about other machines? This event really showed us that romance can be explored further-maybe between us and construction machines?




The objective set for audience, to promote wider and deeper appreciation for the arts. The festival really has done this very well! Placing events throughout the island, from the opening ceremony (Marina Barrage) to the closing ceremony at Toa Payoh, with other events spread thoroughly throughout the island like spreading butter to a bread.


As long as we step out to our doors between May to June, the probability that we will bump into 1 of the event is high!


To me, the event has met its objectives. It certainly had refreshed my appreciation for the Art. I used to feel that I can never understand arts, but the events that I attended had changed my perspective.

I will definitely go for more arts events after this. This festival has made me realised that art can take many forms, not only through dance, pencil and paper, but also through verbal shapes.


Thirdly, to position Singapore as a global arts city.

I really appreciate the objectives and effort set by the Singapore Arts council, especially as an Indonesian living in Singapore. Despite the rich culture that Indonesia has, or the large land it owned, it is very rare for Indonesia to hold such a major event that features a vast variety of International perspectives.

Thus, having a neighbouring country to hold such event, allows us that does not the such luxury to see what has not been done in our country, and gain from it.

In addition, by compiling so many international talents in an island, Singapore has become, even for just a short period of one month, a playground for global artists. Equipped with their own opinion of art, these maestros in the field was pooled in a small island and then spread over evenly throughout the island.

STAKEHOLDERS

Using the definition of stakeholder as people with a legitimate interest in the outcomes of an event (Festival and Special Event Management), the stakeholders of the Singapore's Arts Festival, RED event can be classified into host organisation, participants and spectators, host community, Co-workers and

Host organisation
The Singapore National Arts council(Government Sector) is responsible for the organisation for the event.

Host Community
Involving the toll community in Singapore, this sector is a major determinant of the succes of the event. A positive attitude of the host community will ensure the smooth flow of the event. Overall, the Singapore's community has welcome the Singapore Arts Festival, with the festival being a recurring event. This section also includes transportation agencies such as the Bus services (SBS bus), Taxi organisations (eg, Comfort) and trains (SMRT).
(Comfort Taxi promoting Singapore Arts Festival with glow in the dark decorations)---------------------------->>


I would say that the Singapore society has embraced the festival very well. With local educational Institutes such as NanYang Polytechnic and Temasek Polytechnic sending their students to attend at least one of the event for their project, it can be seen that the Singapore community sees the Singapore Arts Festival as an important source of knowledge.
In fact, the Festival will commence a week earlier this year, on 15 May 2009, to integrate partially with the school term to enable the delivery of special education programmes to primary, secondary and tertiary students.

Sponsors and Partnership
Most of the sponsors has been supporting the fest for a long time. (most large recurring events seek sponsors that can sponsor them continuously)


(A list of sponsors in their sponsorship categories)
Taken from www.singaporeartsfest.com/sponsor/



There were around 47 Sponsors for the event, each coming from a disparate background such as the media to transport to beverage organisations.

The 3 major sponsor of the festival is channel 5 as its official TV station, OKTO as the supporting TV station and Coca Cola Light as the Official Sparkling Beverage.

Considering the majority of the event and the mass amount of media coverage it holds, it is no wonder that the festival could attract mammoth number of sponsorship and made large corporations like Coca Cola which receive hundreds of applications each week to sign a sponsorship contract.

The list does not stop there, partnering more media channels such as Starhub Cable Vision, GameAXis, Business Traveller, JCDecaux and Yahoo!. Continuing with its partnership search, the Singapore Arts Festival managed to tie down major foundations such as SHAW, Hong Leong, Tan Ean Kiam and the LEE foundation. Being an event which draws International talents, the happening brings together the Embassy of the Kingdom of Spain, Australian High Commisision Sweden, Kingdom of Netherlands and France, pouring oil to the burning culture fire.

Understanding that theres a need to spread the festival feel nation-wide, the Festival Mangement team then charmed Suntec Singapore, Vivo City, Raffles City, LASALLE College of the Arts, National Parks Board, Esplanade, Dome Marina Square and the Housing & Development Board. By having a horde of venue partners, Singapore Arts Festival will be able to reduce costs and acquire priority standing in venue reservations.



To acquire great audiences, good venue alone is not enough, good transport services must be there. Thus the Festival team ensures that they had SBS Transit, EZ Link and SMRT in their list of sponsors.

Educational Institutes were not spared from the sponsorship craze. Italian Culture Institute of Singapore, Goethe-Institut Singapore,The University of Western Australia and LASALLE College of the Arts (also a venue partner) has became one of their sponsors too.

Other sponsors:
Hotels, Shops and Beverages
Marina Mandarin SIngapore
Harry's
Creative Eateries
The Heeren Shops
Rendezvous Hotel Singapore
Government Organisations
National Environment Agency
Singapore Tourism Board
PUB (Public Utilities Bill)
Corporate Agencies
Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commece and Industry
Wing Tai Asia
HASBRO Singapore

Co-Workers
For this section, I will be using the co-workers for the event, RED from the Spectre Theatre company (Australia). I tried my best to tour around the event area before, during and after the performance to get this done.

It was real laborous work, although the event lasted for a long 45 minutes, I hardly get to enjoy the show as I need to observe walk around to get a clearer picture of the background crew.

(so I went back the next day to watch the show again )


From the Spectre Theatre,


PERFORMERS



Since the photos I took was from a mere 3.5 megapixel camera, it did not turn out very well. Thus I asked a nice journalist(Mr.Tan Eng Hui) if I could use his photos, fortunately , he agreed. Thanks Mr.Tan!!

The performing crew was practicing before the performance starts. After an interview with the performers after the show, I realised that the choreograph was made in 2004.

Then we have the audio crew, consisting of the band, and mixer crew.



They have been keeping themselves busybefore the start of the event too.

Iwould like to also mention the captain of the Stalker Theatre company whowas the backstage leader of the show.


I really respected him for his open and friendly attitude during our interview and the concern look he gave during the performance, ensuring that everything goes well. Thus I figured he should be mentioned as a separate party here for spearheading the team for the event.
He gave an opening and closing speech for the event, mostly about what the performance was-the misery of mankind. I do not think that I could understand the play if he had not gave that opening speech.



He was running back and forth during the performance just to make sure everything was going all right. Unfortunately, I did not catch his name and his name did not pop out despite my research.



Next we have the Arts Festival staff
We have the Arts Festival information staff.
Giving away brochures, ensuring proper seating of audiences and giving information is their job. There were around 10 of them around, all wearing the same green Arts Festival outfit.



We also have a mix of the crew of the Arts Festival and Spectre Theatre. The logistics team was from both Arts Fest and Spectre theatre. Although they did not work much together before, they cooperated really well to make the event a success.




We also have the Vivo staff.
Although it may be the simple act of cleaning the areas, I think everyone understands that without them, they grass we sit on to watch the performance would not be clean, and we would have nowhere to sit. There was also mass amount of rubbish thrown in the dustbin during the show. The cleaners had to come back twice to clear the bins around the performance area.


We then have the security guards.
They were guarding the performers tent (making it difficult for us to interview the performers, but we managed to anyway). They were also guarding the area during the performance.




Media
As mentioned in the sponsorship section, we have Starhub Cable Vision, GameAXis, Business Traveller, JCDecaux and Yahoo! covering the festival. However, for the event RED, we also have Channel News Asia conducting a brief shot for the event and promoting the event around a week before the actual show. (The picture on the right shows one of their cameramen)The promotion was done during the morning news under THINGS TO DO FOR THE WEEK which plays in MOBILE TV and shown in every car and bus TV, giving a very large media coverage.

Spectators
An event without a spectator is like making food without anyone to eat it. Spectatorship for RED ranges from locals to tourists, passing by shoppers to people who came only to watch the event. The grasses were filled. Amongst these people were the stakeholders that were mentioned earlier, CNN video crew, students from educational institutes, cleaners, photographers, security guards, journalists, some of the stand-by production crews and businessman.
It was a spectacle to see people of varying interests, backgrounds, occupations and mindset stopping for the same exact purpose-to see the production. Even for just a while then, all of us were caught in the same dimension, seeing the exact same thing and being mesmerized by it. No matter how different we were, all of us stopped.


I am waiting for my turn to be involved in something like this.

Galway Arts Festival VS Singapore Arts Festival PART 2

c) Inform your reader about these best practices


Although the product of both festivals is of International Maestros in Art, it is surprising to see that there is no Asian showcase in Galway Arts Festival. Unless I missed the programme (but I checked 3 times!!), I do not see any Asian exhibits/preformance for the Arts Festival in Galway. This was a real dissapointment, although the festival brief introduction says "Showcasing Irish and International Arts", but where is the ASIAN part of the INTERNATIONAL ARTS?!!?!!
Oh well....at least the Singapore Arts Festival do show exhibits across the global world. I did not see any pieces from Middle East though (none from Galway Arts Festival too).

Kudos to both festivals for spreading the programmes evenly throughout the island(for Singapore) and the city(for Galway). This would make it much easier for us(audiences) to gain access to the events at our doorstep. It gives us a tinge of the festival feel whenever we step out.

Although it may seem that Singapore did a better job by spreading the festival throughout the country, we should take into account that Galway is part of Ireland, which is a much larger country than Singapore. Having the Galway festival spread all over Ireland might be quite hectic.



Being a major festival in their respective country, the media coverage that the 2 festivals receive breaks national boundaries. With Singapore Arts Festival having Moove Media and Starhub to advertise nationally and then using Channel News Asia and Yahoo to pool International attention, Singapore Arts Festival has become an International promoted events.

Galway Arts Festival did not lose to this. Taking over the radio waves of Ireland using Galway Bay FM, then using the newspaper such as The Irish Time and many other national medias, Galways Arts Festival management team has covered the national market very well. Not satisfied with the national market, they went further by having BBC to capture their event. As we all know, BBC is a powerful International News Channel, having the festival captured in such well-known media channel is definitely going to capture the International market well.


Both festivals used similar internet network channels. Utilising popular social network website such as facebook which has over 200 million membership worldwide. Something good to learn by each festival is that the use of photo databases and blogs(Flickr) and video database website (MySpace). Both festivals had done well by having a mailing list, Galway Arts Festival did this by having people to join their mailing list, while Singapore Arts Festival did this by having people to sign up for free festival membership.




The most contrasting promotion element of the 2 festival might be the existence of many official blogs covering the Singapore's festival while none at all for Galway's.

Both festival had done well in the booking section such that both allows internet, phone and in-face booking. They might want to include what each other lacks but the other have though, a mail booking and international booking agents.

In terms of promotional activities, Singapore Arts Festival seem to have done more. For example, they reduced ticket price and attract educational insitutes by offering programmes while Galway's does not seem to be doing any of such. The games and promotion tactics used by Galway is few comparing to Singapore Arts Fest.

Galway Arts Festival tackles the crowd by using large prizes to be won, for example, cars and cash money. While Singapore Arts Festival used more realistic bonuses that can be spread over the crowd, for example, win a trip to the Edinburgh festival and early bird discounts. Galway Arts Festival goes one step further to provide for its International audiences by providing accomodation information on its website.





It would be good to pair with other festivals as how Singapore Arts Festival does by pairing with Edinburg festival as it will gain the interests of Art fans which the festival can tap its return customers on.






Although Singapore arts festival received mammoth amount of sponsorship from major corporations, Galway did better in terms of attracting the smaller corporations. Galway showed details on how to be a friend/sponsor of the festival and the benefits of it, attracting smaller companies to be involved in the festivals. Although it might be true that the large companies can give more benefits through sponsorhip than small companies, I do believe that tapping on both would be the best choice. After all, an extra sponsorship will not hurt.

Singapore Arts Festival VS Galway Festival

b) Compare the selected festival with another festival which has been done in another city in terms of its marketing strategy;


The festival reminds me of the Galway Arts Festival. Galway arts festival is celebrated in Ireland, it showcases Irish and International Arts. It has over 31 years of history and is Ireland's leading Arts Festival, similar to how Singapore Arts Festival is to Singapore.



Comparing the marketing strategies of both festival:






I made a table so that it is easier to see the difference and similarities of the 2 festival:






(Please click on the image below to enlarge the table)



















SINGAPORE ARTS FESTIVAL


SINGAPORE ARTS FESTIVAL 2009 is up!!


Well actually, it had passed...here is a little introduction about the festival;



Singapore Arts Festival is an annual festival held by the Singapore arts council. It started out in 1977, only as a national festival held to showcase the art produced by Singapore's diverse culture. Later on, it developed into a large-scale island wide event which embraces not only national, but international forms of arts. The festival has achieved 30 memberships from organisations in Asia, Austaliasia, Europe and America.


The Singapore arts festival has become the largest singular event on Singapore's Arts calendar, attracting and inviting talents from more than 20 countries, showcasing more than 4000 activities and seen by 500,000 audiences.

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It looks like the event is a big one.

This blog is dedicated to SINGAPORE ARTS FESTIVAL 2009!






Theres so many list of events to choose from for the 2009 list

Ranging from free street performances to up-scale performances, the festival also offers entertainment for any types of audiences, especially families. (Theres even a category called "family funfest")



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I've chosen to attend RED, a performance produced by the STALKERS Theatre from Australia.

Why did I choose this event?
CAUSE ITS FREE!! GRATIS!!
.................................................................................................
Well, thats the main reason, but there are others too!


Although there are other free-admission events, but this one seem to lure me in most.


I was looking for a performance that can show me the limit that a human body can be pushed to do-something acrobatic. That was when I saw a brief display of RED in CNN's morning news while I was riding the bus to school.

The presentation caught my interest...
Although I was not really sure if this performance was going to be good, I attended it anyway...


The visit paid off......


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Information about RED:


RED by Stalker Theatre Company (Australia)
Time: 2000hours (45 minutes)
Date:22/05/09, 23/05/09. 24/05/09
Venue: Vivo City




The performance is based on Earth's condition a billion years into the future.

It contextualises what forms humans will take then and how our interests, mindset and behaviour will change when Earth is in danger of colliding with the sun.

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