Renaissance City Plan III Heritage Development Plan - MICA

Heritage
Development Plan
The International Museum Day (IMD)
is another NHB key annual event aimed
at bringing communities closer to the
Museum Roundtable (MR) museums and
allows them to experience museums as
lively and exciting cultural destinations
with something for everyone. Celebrated
annually by all museums around the
world, NHB works hand in hand with other
museums in the MR to raise awareness
of Singapore’s museums and increase
museum visitorship through various
exciting lifestyle activities and events such
as special bus tours, workshops, outdoor
picnics, calligraphy classes and free visits
to selected museums. IMD has been
reaching out to an average of 100,000
visitors per year since 2006.
Community Events at Singapore HeritageFest
2007 © National Heritage Board
AT HOME WITH
HERITAGE
C: CULTIVATING
VOLUNTEERISM
Recognising the importance of
engendering support from communities,
NHB has stepped up efforts to engage our
volunteers in the Friends of the Museums
(FOM) and Museum Volunteers (MV).
NHB museums work with volunteers to
offer training, personal development, and
special previews to its museum exhibitions.
Such active volunteering at museums
engenders greater ownership of heritage
and culture amongst our communities.
D: ENGAGING ONLINE
COMMUNITIES
As we move into the digital age, heritage
and culture also expands beyond the
physical to the virtual realm. NHB has also
been quick and bold in harnessing the
potential of the new media to offer new
services and experiences to its audience.
NHB has established its presence on the
web to reach out to online communities,
via its websites such as a2o (i.e. access
to archives online), Yesterday.sg (i.e.
Singapore heritage blog), MyStory Portal
(i.e. a community wiki to post one’s
memories or write about treasured family
heirlooms) and SGCooL (i.e. an online
repository of artefacts and artworks in
the Singapore national collection). NHB’s
outreach through the virtual space has
gained ground amongst netizens. In
the near future, NHB will be offering
more online opportunities through web
2.0 services such as Facebook, blogs
and wikis.
In 2004, NHB inaugurated the
Singapore Family Tree (SFT) portal, a
one-stop genealogy portal connecting
Singaporeans past and present, local
and overseas. The portal is aimed at
preserving Singaporean’s personal, family
and community heritage, and deepening
their sense of community, rootedness
and connectivity with their ancestral
cultures. In the SFT, individuals can build
their “family trees” online using their
personal artefacts, digital images, videos,
oral recordings and particulars of family
members and relatives and enables
individuals or groups to search for long
lost friends and relatives. To date, some
70,000 entered their names into the SFT
database and generated 6,000 family
trees with links extending as far as Europe
and USA.
39