Singapore needs new mindset to avoid art-ache of creative failure
THERE IS NO doubting the importance of being earnest, though in the case of Singapore - where it usually involves the earnestness of important beings - such flag-waving largely entails something mildly amusing, with a tinge of the trying-too-hard tragic.
In his National Day Rally speech on Sunday, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong challenged his people to loosen up a bit.
'To succeed in remaking Singapore and attracting talent, we must also make our city vibrant and cosmopolitan, throbbing with energy and excitement,' he said. 'If we stay unchanged, we will be in deep trouble, irrelevant, and marginalised.'
Brave words, indeed. Unfortunately, attracting the creative types is not just a matter of setting up cafes, funding galleries, building museums and drawing up five-year development plans.
Places like Taos in New Mexico, Sundance in Utah, Provincetown in Massachusetts and other artists' colonies all over the world were not created by the state. They evolved organically, with some fertilising bits of commercialism thrown in. Creativity needs a bit of slickness - even sleaze. For a thousand flowers to bloom, one may need a thousand tons of dirt and carbon dioxide.
Of course, Singapore has been doing its best to build its own hothouse of talent. For instance, the multimillion-dollar Esplanade Theatres on the Bay is providing a cutting-edge home for the city's culturati but it has yet to put Singapore on the global cultural map much like Frank Gehry's Guggenheim complex has catapulted the once sleepy backwater of Bilbao on to the world stage.
Make no mistake about it - Singapore has some very hip people and super cool places. For instance, it is generally credited as a centre for innovative tropical architecture as well as commercial graphic design.
It is also known for exporting innovative fashion designers and promising young film-makers.
Still, Singapore remains a major 'importer' of art through state-subsidised shows and fellowships. Given its excess capital, it is also - like Hong Kong and, increasingly, Shanghai - a natural magnet for art auctions and private sales. But an art market is one thing and an artistic community is another. One has soul while the other is obsessed only with sales.
The creative industry permeates everything, from the design and manufacture of fungible goods to the 'imagineering' of unquantifiably valuable brands. The industry - from cafes to culinary palaces, from the starving artists living in rat holes to the multimillion-dollar art and fashion empires of Giorgio Armani and Damien Hirsch - is expected to contribute as much as US$1.3 trillion to the global economy this year and to grow at more than 7 per cent annually, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
No wonder the Lion City is eager to attract and foster creative types.
In Singapore, the industry already accounted for about 3.2 per cent of gross domestic product, according to a Department of Statistics report in 2000, the most recent data available.
The agency calculated that the 'creative industry' - from visual arts and advertising to broadcasting and IT services including the intellectual property infrastructure needed for production and distribution - earned S$17.6 billion ($81.74 billion) and employed about 80,000 people in 2000 - about 4 per cent of total nationwide employment.
The statistics department put the growth rate at 18 per cent a year from 1986 to 2000.
As early as 2003, in its Economic Survey of Singapore report, the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts saw the potential economic contributions of the creative sector.
Following recommendations from experts at the Ministry of Trade and Industry, a Creative Industries Strategies Group was formed to squeeze profits from the arts, to put it bluntly.
However, unlike civil service or corporate management, the artistic instinct cannot be squared or cubed by meritocracy, which in Singapore sometimes approaches ruthless proportions.
Most Singaporeans, particularly the older generation and the conservative camps, seem to be ambivalent towards creative types, which typically include flamboyant, non-conformist, iconoclastic, gay and gender-bending people.
Such an attitude goes against the tenets prescribed by Richard Florida, author of two groundbreaking works - The Rise of the Creative Class and The Flight of the Creative Class: The New Global Competition for Talent.
Professor Florida argues for 'technology, talent and tolerance', with emphasis on the second element. 'Wherever talent goes, innovation, creativity, and economic growth are sure to follow,' he wrote.
His book is actually a warning addressed to the US, which he believes is being abandoned by creative talents amid conservative-led intolerance and misguided educational reforms. It is encouraging to note that Singapore's prime minister seems to be open to some chilling out. But does he have what it takes to goad the conservative Singaporeans to shake their booty?
Jake van der Kamp is on holiday