Renaissance City Plan III Heritage Development Plan - MICA

Heritage
Development Plan
AT HOME WITH
HERITAGE
For pre-schoolers, the Out of the
Box! Workshops adopt inter-disciplinary
approaches to engage children to think
out of the box through history and culture.
Focusing on puppets and legends, the
first series of workshops adopted the
Asian epics of Ramayana and Journey to
the West to inspire pre-schoolers to think
creatively about heritage and culture by
engaging them in group tasks relating to
the epics. Since its launch in 2006, the
Out of the Box! Workshops have been
considered a signature programme at NM.
With RCP funding, NM intends to develop
a second series of the workshop using a
different collection from the museum.
NHB has adopted drama as a form of
pedagogy to reach out to school children
through the Dramatising Heritage
and Drama of History Competition
programmes developed with RCP
funding. Dramatising Heritage was a
comprehensive series of plays on heritage
that were brought to kindergartens,
primary schools and secondary schools
in 2000. About 500 of these travelling
heritage shows were performed until
2003. The Drama of History Competition
by NM is an ongoing event which
requires students to write and stage
their own 10-minute plays based on a
topic or character in Singapore’s history,
after viewing the museum’s mixedmedia
exhibits. The popularity of both
programmes attests to the success of
experiential learning as an innovative way
to reach out to children and cultivate their
early bonding with the museums.
For youths, Soul 2 Soul attempts to
engage youths in a competition to create
works related to heritage and culture
through photography, graphic design and
guerilla film-making. Over 100 pieces of
creative works were produced arising
from the programme for the inaugural
competition in 2007, culminating in an
exhibition curated by young talent Brian
Gothong Tan. This was a positive start for
NHB to attract youth audience and create
an appealing environment to draw them
back for repeat visits and engagement.
With continued funding from RCP, NHB
has plans to develop Soul 2 Soul into a
bi-annual youth festival with the next run
commencing in 2009.
GB
Children’s Season at the National Museum of
Singapore (NMS) © National Heritage Board
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