Every action has a reaction. In the 2000s, as Singapore sought to attract the global gaze with a slew of glamorous attractions and events, cultural conversations here turned introspective. Who were we becoming in this brave new world? What should we hold on to, and how should we change? And how could we learn to really listen to one another as we had these conversations?
In 2015, theatre company Drama Box premiered The Lesson at SIFA, the first of many iterations of this participatory format that uses debate and facilitation to provoke reflection on what it takes to make decisions as a community. A year before that, the Migrant Worker Poetry Competition began — it was one of the earliest local initiatives that sought to build bridges between Singaporeans and the migrant worker community through the creative expressions of these migrants.
In this conversation, Drama Box’s Koh Hui Ling and the Migrant Worker Poetry Competition’s Shivaji Das share more about how their respective experiments in community conversations took shape, and how these have evolved over the past decade in Singapore and beyond. Together with moderator Elaine Chan, they reflect on the impact and future of these experiments. What difference can arts-based platforms make as communal conversations become an increasingly complex art?
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