School
of Creative
Industries
Wennie Yang
Wennie Yang is an arts administrator from Toronto, Canada with over five years of financial coordination and project management experiences in corporate and non-profit arts organisations. Driven by her interests in visual arts and film, she actively pursues opportunities in both disciplines and thrives on organising community events and festivals.
Work
Research interests: non-profit management, festival management, independent art spaces, community-based initiatives, volunteer engagement
Thesis abstract
Fostering a dynamic arts ecosystem: case studies of independent arts spaces in Singapore
The emergence and development of creative and cultural industries has led to arts and cultural investments by cities globally. The strategies deployed in developing the cultural economy often involve building infrastructures and developing professional capabilities in order to nurture a sustainable arts ecosystem that can support a diverse set of players. In the case of Singapore, the state’s commitments to cultivating a culturally vibrant society can be traced back to the 1989 Report of the Advisory Council on Culture and the Arts. While established statutory boards and related governance bodies have prioritized nation-building agendas and economic motivations, there has been a paradigm shift in policies in recent years to emphasize the importance of tripartite relationships between the public, the private, and the people in order to build a dynamic ecosystem. In view of the evolving cultural policy direction, the research will take on a micro examination on the contemporary visual arts ecology via a study of independent art spaces. The cultural vibrancy of an arts ecosystem is dependent on contributions of diversified players; therefore, the research attempts to investigate the emergence of independent art spaces in Singapore and their interrelations with the broader visual art ecology, and assess the linkage between cultural policy and practical implementations.