Arts in Your Neighbourhood 2020 took place from 12th to 29th March 2020 with an interesting variety of dance, literary arts, music, theatre and visual arts programmes taking place over three weekends. Although I was planning to take my time to explore the various programmes over the three weekends, the Covid-19 situation at the time pretty much affected a number of the programmes that were on offer. Nevertheless, here’s my story of Exploring Arts in Your Neighbourhood 2020.
The Covid-19 situation till date has caused massive disruptions to Singapore, our daily personal and working life has changed due to the circuit breaker restrictions implementation, resulting in almost all of us working from home (WFH), home based learning (HBL) for the schooling children, #StayHomeforSG as we #SGUnited #SGTogether to fight this Covid-19 outbreak.
Since we can’t visit the museums or visit art galleries, attend community events, the arts, creatives, museums, heritage networks are coming to them online with #SGCultureAnywhere. This is where I play a small part in #SGCultureAnywhere x #ArtsInYourNeighbourhood through my photographs that I took during my arts adventure exploration in the Bukit Panjang neighbourhood.
During Arts in Your Neighbourhood 2020, I went on the Bukit Panjang route, starting from Blk 139 Petir Road (Void Deck), followed by Blk 133A Cashew Road (Ramps), Blk 257 Bangkit Road before reaching the playground/open space outside Holland-Bukit Panjang Town Council.
Atomick @ 139 Petir Road
TraseOne @ 133A Cashew Road & 139 Petir Road
SYCO @ 257 Bangkit Road
PAG-AHON + MENINGKA @ playground/open space outside Holland-Bukit Panjang Town Council
Podspace @ playground/open space outside Holland-Bukit Panjang Town Council
My way of exploring arts came from my style of photojournalism over the years, attending the various Singapore Biennale editions since attending my first in 2008 (check out my 2011 , 2013 editions), that took place helped me to walk around the arts sites, exploring and discovering the artworks of various artists.
There were other programmes on schedule (Bound, Back of the Bus, Rolling On, A Collection of Things and Podscape) that I was keen to attend but I didn’t manage to attend due to schedule constraints and cancellations arising from Covid-19 situation at that point in time.
Arts coming to your local heartland neighbourhoods is a great initiative that not only brings interesting and exciting dance, literary arts, music, theatre and visual arts programmes into the heartlands, they would get people to visit other heartland neighbourhoods too.
I hope the circuit breaker is lifted when the time comes, life can slowly get back to normal here in Singapore, a vaccine for the Covid-19 can be out soon and we can start regaining our life, trade and travel with the world community as well. It’s not just the economy that can get back to work, the arts and creatives industries (and my photography business) can get back up and running again.
Time to continue to Pay It Forward and Pass It On with more #SGCultureAnywhere stories!
A TGH Photography x Canon EOS RP Explorer Series Production.