NATIONAL ARTS COUNCIL SCHOLARS

NATIONAL ARTS COUNCIL SCHOLARS

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(Career progression): **

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Ms Audrey Wong Wai Yen asked the Acting Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts (a) how does the National Arts Council (NAC) track the career progression of scholars under the NAC scholarship programmes after the completion of their studies; (b) what has been the overall contribution of scholars to the local arts and cultural landscape since the scholarships were introduced; and (c) whether NAC will consider issuing a public report on the contributions and achievements of these scholars to give them more recognition.

RAdm [NS] Lui Tuck Yew: The National Arts Council (NAC)'s Scholarship and Bursary Scheme was introduced in 1992 to encourage budding young arts talents to pursue developmental training at local or foreign institutions. To date, NAC has awarded a total of 80 scholarships and about 820 bursaries.

To keep track of our scholarship and bursary recipients' development, NAC requires scholars to regularly update their profile and portfolio on the Creative Industries Scholarships website, which features the scholarship schemes under MICA and its agencies for the creative sector. Upon graduation, scholars have to engage in a minimum two years of employment or practice within the local arts sector. This should be in their area of training. They are also required to update NAC annually on their careers and contributions to the arts sector for the first five years after their graduation.

Many scholarship recipients remain active in the Singapore arts scene beyond the scholarship obligation and continue to contribute to the arts scene here. To cite an example, actress and drama educator Noorlinah Mohamed (Shell-NAC scholarship recipient 1998) has not only been active as a theatre practitioner, but also co-founded the Singapore Drama Educators Association in 2002 as she is a passionate advocate for the professional development of drama educators in Singapore. In 2009, in view of Noorlinah's significant contributions to the industry as an arts educator, NAC supported her a second time with an overseas bursary to pursue a PhD in Arts Education at the University of Warwick.

Other recipients have also made their mark in the arts sector locally and internationally. For example, 24 out of the 74 Young Artist Award recipients to date (or about 32%) have been NAC scholarship or bursary recipients. In the arena of visual arts, visual artists Brian Gothong and Donna Ong Tan were among 95 artists and artiste collectives, from 38 countries, to participate in the inaugural Singapore Biennale in 2006. Brian was also awarded the "Best Use of Multimedia" in the Straits Times Life! Theatre Awards 2005, while Donna was one of the nominees for the President's Young Talent Award in 2009.

Moving forward, NAC has plans to more actively engage the scholarship recipients, to (i) explore how the knowledge, skills and exposure they have gained during their studies can be further developed to meet specific capability needs in the sector as well as (ii) to

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identify and groom potential arts leaders. We thank Ms Audrey Wong for her suggestion and will consider a suitable platform to present a comprehensive overview of the support that NAC's scholarships have lent to recipients over the years and their achievements.