The ARH Connects event series supports learning and networking for arts Self-Employed Persons (SEPs), and spans the fields of finance, legal, wellness and more. With the first set of sessions held in May 2022, the series will be held 2-3 times each year, featuring more programmes led by the arts community.
Stay tuned for more information on our next ARH Connects!
Past Events
Are you a visual artist or writer, and keen to better understand the implications of copyrights on your works? Join Professor David Tan as he explains what copyright and the right of identification means for visual artists (e.g. painters, sculptors and photographers) and writers, when infringement occurs and how the fair use defence operates in the new Copyright Act 2021.
About the speaker
Professor David Tan is presently Head (Intellectual Property) at the EW Barker Centre for Law & Business at National University of Singapore. At NUS, David pioneered courses in Entertainment Law, Fashion Law, and Freedom of Speech. David has also distinguished himself as a fine art and fashion photographer having had a number of solo exhibitions since 1999. His photographic works – advertising campaigns, celebrity features and fashion editorials – have appeared in publications such as Vanity Fair, Time, and Harper’s Bazaar.
How can the arts and technology come together for impactful community outreach and education? Hear from Lee Sze-Chin, artist, art therapist and art educator as he shares his experiences planning, facilitating and overseeing projects and programmes that have combined the use of technology and art to appeal to a wide range of learners and reach out to communities in an impactful way. Learn also about how Curiosity, Communication and Collaboration is needed to encourage the exploration and exchange of new ideas and perspectives, as well as the pooling of resources, expertise and networks to create programmes and initiatives that engage learners and communities meaningfully.
About the speaker
Sze-Chin is an artist, art therapist and art educator. His research interests include the intersections of art therapist-art educator-artist identities, as well as the impact of digital technologies on social, emotional, and psychological well-being. Most recently, he has been piloting phygital projects and bridging physical and digital experiences for his collaborations with the community, as well as cultural and educational institutions.
Are you a performing arts practitioner keen to find out more about how the Copyright Act affects your work? Professor David Tan explains what copyright, the performer right and the right of identification means for performing artists (e.g. composers, choreographers, actors and dancers) and scriptwriters, when infringement occurs and how the fair use defence operates in the new Copyright Act 2021.
About the speaker
Professor David Tan is presently Head (Intellectual Property) at the EW Barker Centre for Law & Business at National University of Singapore. At NUS, David pioneered courses in Entertainment Law, Fashion Law, and Freedom of Speech. David has also distinguished himself as a fine art and fashion photographer having had a number of solo exhibitions since 1999. His photographic works – advertising campaigns, celebrity features and fashion editorials – have appeared in publications such as Vanity Fair, Time, and Harper’s Bazaar.
Are you an introvert, extrovert or an ambivert? Networking is not about forcing a square peg into a round hole. Join Usha Menon in an interactive session that aims to help you explore networking tips and frameworks that match your personality. Learn how to build connections, co-create ideas and add value to your interactions, which can strengthen your entrepreneurial and professional journey.
About the speaker
A celebrated speaker, trainer, consultant and thought leader, Usha Menon brings hands-on experience and unique insights she has gained from the inside-out, through 35 years of volunteering, working and consulting in the social impact space covering social services, arts, health, education and international development agencies. Usha has an insatiable appetite for helping others maximise their potential. She is passionate about people development and organisational capacity building.
With the right tools and expertise, financial stability can be achieved for a fulfilling self-employed career. Join ARH and NTUC U FSE for a night of no-holds-barred money conversations that only arts practitioners deserve.
About NTUC U FSE
The NTUC Freelancers and Self-Employed Unit (NTUC U FSE) represents freelancers and self-employed persons (SEPs) in Singapore and works towards strengthening their Wage, Welfare and Work Prospects. NTUC U FSE works closely with stakeholders such as relevant government agencies, SEP community groups, platform intermediaries, corporate service buyers, and business solutions providers to strengthen income security, skills mastery, work prospects, and occupational safety and health of SEPs. Visit www.ufse.org.sg and www.facebook.com/NTUCUFSE for more information.
September 2022 Recap
Over two weeks between 14 - 23 September, arts SEPs came together to network and share insights on a myriad of topics. From project management and audio production, to developing the arts ecosystem through incubation programmes and collaborating with businesses, here are the highlights of the sessions:
🤗 At the first session of September’s ARH Connects series, we heard from Faye Lim (CITRUS Practices) as well ask Kamal Dollah and Saiful Amri (Kamal Arts, Singapore) about two initiatives - the Library of Care and ATAS Arts Resource. The session left us feeling inspired by the spirit of camaraderie within the arts community to support caring practices in artmaking and meeting artists’ needs for venue support.
🤝 Building a safe space for experimentation: Traditional arts practitioner Banupriya Ponnarasu and Mervyn Ye from Venture Music Asia shared about the importance of incubation programmes in nurturing budding artists and developing their craft. Such programmes not only provided a safe environment for artists to experiment and learn, they also provided them with skills and confidence to present their works and network.
💼 Reaching a common understanding: How can artists progress from short-term, ad-hoc projects to cultivating longer-term sustainable relationships with businesses work? Arts practitioners Fié Neo, Seet Yun Teng and Chong Gua Khee, shared about how #ArtsSEPs and businesses can build a deeper understanding of one another’s practices and priorities to develop mutually-supportive partnerships.
📄 Organising your life: at a hands-on workshop, audio producer Ng Sze Min and Hoo Kuan Cien from Producers SG shared tips on how SEPs can better manage their freelance projects with free productivity tools and project management frameworks like scrum.
🎧 Getting started on all things audio: Participants at the two-part audio workshop with Centre 42 got to learn how to record and edit their own podcast, voice reel or audio play at the C42 Podcast Facility. FYI, the facility is available for all SEPs to book and use!
Thank you to all our participants and speakers for sharing your experiences, tips and best practices! We look forward to meeting everyone again at the next ARH Connects session.
Sessions
The pooling of resources doesn’t just reduce waste and increase productivity, but also upholds the spirit of generosity and partnership within the arts community. Join Chong Gua Khee and Faye Lim as they share about how the Library of Care provides digital resources on adopting caring practices in the arts, and hear from Kamal Arts on how the ATAS Arts Space enables artists to work and experiment in a multi-use space.
About the projects
Library of Care
Library of Care is a free online resource for arts workers that outlines concepts around care in artmaking processes, as well as offers concrete tools that can be immediately applied to projects and practices. It's an initiative by CITRUS practices working group, a loose group of arts workers and practitioners who came together in 2021 in hopes of deepening and expanding conversations around better practices in the arts.
Instagram: @CITRUS.practices
ATAS Arts Space
Kamal Arts is a visual arts practice founded by Mr. Kamal Dollah, an artist known for batik painting and caricature art. We operate two spaces (a studio and an art gallery) on the rooftops of Wisma Geylang Serai. The Organization Transformation Grant (OTG) empowered us to brave the pandemic and develop resources for a strong recovery not just for ourselves but also many other smaller art practices affected by the Covid-19 situation. Collaborating with Mr. Saiful Amri a theatre practitioner, we initiated the ATAS Arts Resources to improve our space and human resources to support numerous artists and groups with an alternative space during difficult times to experiment and present their work affordably.
About the moderator
Mok Cui Yin is an independent producer and facilitator. Her experience spans dance, music, theatre, contemporary performance, visual arts, literary arts, socially-engaged projects, experimental works, and festival management. She is an organising member of Producers SG, a community network for producers and self-producing artists in Singapore. She is also a planning team member of Asian Producers Platform, and an international associate of Asia-Art-Activism.
Incubation programmes help nurture and develop aspiring and emerging artists in our arts ecosystem within a safe environment through experimenting, learning and mentorships. Join Banupriya D/O Ponnarasu and Venture Music Asia as they share more about how their projects look into supporting budding traditional arts and music practitioners with the right know-how and networks as they continue to further their passion in the arts.
About the projects
Scarlet Mela Festival
The Scarlet Mela Festival of the Arts is a platform dedicated for youths who are traditional arts practitioners in any discipline of dance, theatre, and music. The SCMFA is an umbrella for both independent traditional arts work and intercultural work. It also aims to create a discourse between traditional arts, contemporary interpretations and the relevance of it today for traditional arts practitioners.
Voices Music Mentorship
The Voices Music Mentorship equips budding artists with marketing, production and distribution capabilities and know-how. New audience development with an emphasis on digital are critical aspects of this project, over other traditional music mentorship programmes. Building a community around the mentors and mentees has fostered future collaborations, to ensure that the acts have the resources and knowledge they need to consider a career in the arts.
About the moderator
Mok Cui Yin is an independent producer and facilitator. Her experience spans dance, music, theatre, contemporary performance, visual arts, literary arts, socially-engaged projects, experimental works, and festival management. She is an organising member of Producers SG, a community network for producers and self-producing artists in Singapore. She is also a planning team member of Asian Producers Platform, and an international associate of Asia-Art-Activism.
For Arts Self-Employed Persons (SEPs), projects with businesses are often short-term and transactional. With an eye on longer-term sustainability, hear from Fié Neo [Sustenarts] and Seet Yun Teng and Chong Gua Khee [Arts-Business x Business-Arts Residencies] on how their residency projects aim to make the shift towards building deeper understanding and mutually supportive partnerships between the arts and businesses.
About the projects
Sustenarts
We are in a climate emergency. There is urgent need for systems change at scale yet the impact space often works in silos and climate action is not happening fast enough. Socially engaged arts has huge potential for impact in mindset shifting and building awareness but are often under funded and unable to support artists in creating careers in this field. Sustenarts is INSEP's attempt to bridge the gap through cross sector collaboration. Sustainable start ups and artists were brought together to explore how socially engaged arts could promote the adoption of climate solutions.
Arts-Business x Business-Arts
Arts-Business x Business-Arts (ABxBA) is a new residency platform that aims to pair local artists with local businesses, as a way for artists and businesses to learn from each other, work together and develop mutually supportive partnerships. In our 2021-22 pilot, we supported photographer Marvin Tang to work with urban farm and social enterprise City Sprouts, and artist Salty Xi Jie Ng to deepen her relationship with Chinese religious goods merchant Ban Kah Hiang.
Instagram: @ABxBA.residency
About the moderator
Mok Cui Yin is an independent producer and facilitator. Her experience spans dance, music, theatre, contemporary performance, visual arts, literary arts, socially-engaged projects, experimental works, and festival management. She is an organising member of Producers SG, a community network for producers and self-producing artists in Singapore. She is also a planning team member of Asian Producers Platform, and an international associate of Asia-Art-Activism.
Countless notebook pages and loose Google Docs later, are you still frustrated with getting organised?
In this hands-on session led by certified ScrumMaster (atlassian.com/agile/scrum) and Audio Producer Ng Sze Min from Artwave, together with Producers SG, learn how to use the Kanban Board to manage your freelance projects.
Participants are encouraged to bring a current or upcoming project to the session, with the free version of Trello (https://trello.com/en) installed on their desktop/laptops. Feel free to participate as a team if you are working on the same project together.
About our speakers
Ng Sze Min is the Co-Founder and Creative Audio Producer at Artwave. She has led over 30+ productions and digital encounters with partners across the wellness, climate action and cultural spaces. As a participant in the inaugural Producers Lab by Producers SG, her final presentation was made on a Kanban board, showing ways in which Agile methodologies could be adapted by artists/creative startups for organisational transformation.
Producers SG is a community network for independent producers, arts managers, and self-producing artists in Singapore. We foster a community of practice that gathers, creates and shares information, resources and skills; as well as extending care and support for the wellbeing and livelihoods of our fellow arts workers. Supported by NAC’s the Self-Employed Person Grant, we ran the pilot edition of the Producers Lab: “What if we do it this way?”.
Interested to get started on your audio projects but not sure where or how to begin? Join us in this 2-part workshop series where we introduce you to the basics of audio recording and editing. You’ll get to be familiar with recording at the C42 podcast facility for your future projects and bring home handy tricks to brush up on your editing skills.
Sign up now for either or both Workshop sessions! Participants will also get a free 30min slot outside of the workshop time to record a demo audio clip on their own.
| Session 1 | Session 2 |
An Introduction to C42’s Podcast Facility | Editing Audio |
The C42 Podcast Facility was created to support the production of Backlogues: An Arts Management Podcast Series, an audio documentation project in collaboration with Sing Lit Station and Artwave Studio, and supported by the NAC Organisation Transformation Grant. The Podcast Facility is available for Arts SEPs to book and use. Find out more here.
About our speakers
Artwave Studio is an audio content house powering podcasts, music and thoughtful encounters. Our nimble team of producers, creative writers, voiceover artists, sound designers and audio engineers come together to create content across climate action, wellness and the arts. Most recent podcasts include Climate Cheesecake and Backlogues; and check out our first walking trail: Artist's Block at Stamford Arts Centre.
Centre 42 is a non-profit arts organisation with IPC status committed to the creation, documentation and promotion of text-based works for the Singapore stage.As a theatre development space and intermediary, we incubate original writings for the stage, support the development of artists and new works, and develop and maintain a functional archive documenting the histories and processes of Singapore theatre. Our recent endeavour in the audio space is about the documentation of arts management practices for theatre in Backlogues: An Arts Management Podcast Series.
In partnership with Law Society Pro Bono Services
With the easing of safe management measures in Singapore and a return to more arts events, this is a chance to get clear about your contracts. The past few years might have highlighted the importance of contracts in protecting your rights, especially in uncertain times.
Join our speaker, Shaun Lee, Bird & Bird ATMD as he shares about contract law, dispute management and resolution as well as how to build effective contractual provisions in these changing times and responds to any questions you might have.
About our speaker
Shaun is a Counsel in Bird & Bird ATMD LLP’s dispute resolution group. He is dual-qualified in Singapore and in the UK. He has represented clients in arbitration and regulatory tribunal proceedings as well as across all levels of the Singapore courts including before the Singapore International Commercial Court (SICC). He has acted for and advised clients on international commercial disputes, employment, data protection and regulatory compliance matters.
He is a member of the Law Awareness Committee and volunteers at pro bono legal clinics.
In partnership with the National Gallery Singapore
2021 saw a surge of interest in Non-fungible tokens or NFTs, with established auction houses like Christie’s and Sotheby’s beginning to sell NFTs. Within the local art scene, there has been a growing interest in the potential of NFTs to transform how art is valued.
Join Kathleen Ditzig (Curator) and Kevin Lim (Technologist) of National Gallery Singapore, as they speak to common myths and address any questions you might have about NFTs.
About our speakers
Kathleen Ditzig
Kathleen Ditzig is a Singaporean researcher and curator. Her curatorial practice aspires to the iterative and meaningful building of networks and platforms. It has involved the development of artist residencies, publications and exhibitions for museums and government agencies, as well as the building of independent educational programmes and exhibitions for emerging artists. Her ongoing PhD research looks to exhibitions as a technology and Southeast Asia as a Cold War exhibitionary idiom. As a curator at the National Gallery Singapore, she researches art histories of technology from a Southeast Asian perspective.
Kevin Lim
Kevin Lim (PhD)
Deputy Director, Digital Innovation & Transformation
National Gallery Singapore
Working at National Gallery Singapore for the past decade, Kevin Lim has evolved through roles in Visitor Experience, to Corporate Planning, to Innovation at the Gallery.
The Digital Innovation & Transformation (DIT) group is aimed at developing new ways for visitors to experience the Gallery:
1. Y-Lab looks at proof of problem, and scans the horizon for startups to collaborate with
2. Co:Lab X looks at proof of market, through viable in-house innovations
3. Digital Delivery look at proof of scale, by growing viable solutions reliably and sustainably
Kevin Lim graduated with a doctorate in Communication theory from the State University at Buffalo, New York and his work has revolved around the reflexive architecture of society and online social networks.
In partnership with the Singapore Association for Mental Health
Through this creative talk, participants understand the importance of self-care and taking time to unwind from stressful events via the medium of art. By using shapes, colours and mark-making techniques, participants will leave the session with a simple, beautiful-looking artwork of their own and with a clearer head space!
Note: Participants will prepare their own materials: marker or pen, paper, coloured highlighters or watercolour paints.
About our speaker
Serene Goh, Programme Specialist, SAMH Creative MINDSET Hub, designs, facilitates and evaluates creative programmes, as part of her work in mental health education, prevention and rehabilitation. As the SAMH representative in an east community collab, she works actively with partners to initiate collective impact projects that promote individual and community well-being. She also conducts trauma-informed care training and helped to set up SAMH Creative SAY!, a neighbourhood youth wellness centre located in Marsiling. She holds a B.A. in Development Studies from Brown University and a M.A. in Creative Writing from studies at LASALLE College of the Arts.
In partnership with Law Society Pro Bono Services
With the shift towards presenting art on more digital platforms and mediums in the past two years, coupled with the major amendments to the Copyright Law in end 2021, understanding what constitutes your IP is more important than ever. Given the ease in resharing and adaption in the digital realm compared to traditional mediums, more nuance and care is needed to prevent possible infringements.
Join Gretchen Su, a partner at WITHERS KHATTARWONG in the intellectual property and technology team, to learn more about IP and the local laws that protect your rights.
About our speaker
Gretchen is a partner at WITHERS KHATTARWONG, in the intellectual property and technology team. She is experienced in the protection, commercialisation, and enforcement of intellectual property rights. Her areas of work include the strategic planning and management of clients’ global intellectual property portfolios, advising on brand clearance and protection, advising on and drafting commercial agreements relating to intellectual property and information technology, as well as advising and representing clients in intellectual property disputes. She is an accredited Mediator with the Singapore International Mediation Institute (SIMI).
