Latest news with #SGCulturePass
CNA
5 days ago
- Business
- CNA
Some minority ethnic groups in Singapore keep food heritage alive through online sales
SINGAPORE: Before making way for the nation's development, Mr Firdaus Sani's family once called Pulau Semakau, off the southern coast of Singapore, home. His mother and grandmother crafted coastal dishes with ingredients sourced from both land and sea. Five years ago, he decided to honour that heritage by launching an online food business centred on the traditional cuisine of the Orang Laut, also known as the people of the sea. Beloved dishes include Gulai Nenas (pineapples in peppery prawn broth) and Sotong Hitam (fresh squid in savoury squid ink paste). As the National Day long weekend approaches, Mr Firdaus said he has seen a 30 per cent surge in orders. 'I think the stories that come with (our food) are very important, and how they derive from communities that are no longer living on the southern islands,' he told CNA. 'It's important that these dishes represent something that is bigger, something that is lost.' Mr Firdaus has turned down offers to expand into a restaurant in order to keep the venture both authentic and manageable for his mother, who does most of the cooking. 'For me, this is intangible cultural heritage. We want to make sure that we're able to upkeep and continue a certain legacy,' he added. Amid a surge in interest, he is cooking up plans to launch food heritage tours and communal dining sessions under the SG Culture Pass initiative. The SG Culture Pass gives all Singaporeans aged 18 and above S$100 (US$80) in credits to enjoy local arts, culture, and heritage programmes. Like Mr Firdaus, several businesses specialising in minority ethnic dishes have reported an increase in orders amid festivities leading up to Singapore's 60th birthday. These small businesses have ventured into the online space in efforts to preserve their niche culinary heritage. They also hope to introduce their unique, hard-to-find traditional dishes to a wider audience through heritage festivals and community events. CHANGING TASTES Mr Chester Matthias Tan from the Heritage Business Foundation highlighted the important role food plays in shaping Singapore's national story. 'For a lot of other engagements with culture, you have to make a deliberate decision to go to a museum (or) to try out a craft,' said the founder of the non-profit organisation dedicated to the advancement of Singapore's heritage. 'But food is everywhere, and we consume it every day. So food is a very easy way for people to be connected with their culture, for them to experience it, not in a spectacular fashion like it's a special occasion but just as something that they experience every day.' However, he noted that a key challenge lies in changing tastes, emphasising that early exposure to traditional flavours is crucial in cultivating lasting appreciation. 'There are recipes that are at risk of disappearing, that are connected to each of the different ethnic groups. A lot of them are recipes that are very difficult to prepare,' he said. 'They are very laborious, and the skills required to prepare them, or just the time investment, is not really something that we see very often nowadays.' SHARING WITH A WIDER AUDIENCE Seventy-six-year-old Mary Gomes is equally committed to preserving the culinary traditions of Singapore's Eurasian community. Taught to cook by her mother, she became one of the first to publish a dedicated Eurasian cookbook in Singapore in 2001. 'I remember whatever simple dishes my mum used to cook for us, because she was so versatile,' she said. 'When she went to the market, whatever she could get her hands on, she would come back and cook something out of it.' Madam Gomes is now turning to heritage events as a way to share her culture with more people. 'They can see for themselves what they like, what type of food they like. Some people don't have a very clear view of how Eurasian food is prepared,' she said. 'They always think that ours maybe could be more Western, but actually they don't know we are very close in line with the Peranakan style of cooking.' Mdm Gomes now runs an online business after closing her cafe three years ago. She said that sales have been growing by at least 10 per cent annually. To ensure her culture lives on, she is gradually passing the baton to her daughter and collaborating with organisations like the Eurasian Association and the Peranakan Museum through cultural events.
Business Times
01-08-2025
- Business
- Business Times
Singapore's temporal sovereignty: How SG60 reveals the future of statecraft
POLITICAL science has long understood sovereignty as control over territory, people and resources. But Singapore's SG60 initiatives reveal something unprecedented in statecraft: temporal sovereignty – the systematic capacity to govern across multiple time horizons simultaneously. The SG60 package demonstrates governance operating on 60-year strategic cycles while executing immediate interventions, representing not just effective policy, but the evolution of governance itself. SG60: Long-term thinking in action A closer look at the package reveals Singapore's temporal sovereignty in action. The S$1 billion hawker centre investment operates on 20 to 30-year horizons, anticipating generational cultural preservation needs while creating immediate jobs and long-term tourism assets. The S$600 million in charity matching funds creates sustainable philanthropic ecosystems that will strengthen Singapore's social fabric for decades. The SG Culture Pass and ActiveSG credits build long-term consumption habits while providing immediate revenue to their respective industries. This approach is driven by institutions such as Singapore's Centre for Strategic Futures (CSF). The CSF's methodology goes beyond traditional forecasting to address sudden disruptions and long-term trends simultaneously. Recent research in the European Journal of Futures Research by economics professor Ceyhun Elgin highlights Singapore's institutional design as exemplifying how governments can build genuine long-term planning capabilities. The SG60 voucher distribution reveals this sophisticated approach applied to economic policy. Rather than simple stimulus, the vouchers channel spending toward heartland businesses and hawker centres, strengthening local commercial ecosystems. The timing, disbursed from July 2025 with validity through 2026, creates sustained economic activity patterns rather than temporary boosts. This demonstrates using today's policy tools to shape future economic behaviour. Institutional advantages for business and investment Singapore's ability to achieve temporal sovereignty stems from specific institutional innovations that create decades of policy certainty. The integration of strategic planning throughout government represents a fundamental departure from treating long-term thinking as a specialised function. Research commissioned by the UK Government Office for Science noted that in Singapore, strategic thinking skills are core parts of civil service training, creating systematic planning capacity rather than isolated expertise. For businesses, this means rare policy predictability, an advantage exemplified by the SG60 hawker centre investment. Building on UNESCO's recognition of Singapore's hawker culture, the S$1 billion commitment creates sustained opportunities for food, tourism and property development. This provides an investment certainty that is a luxury in most democracies, where projects are vulnerable to electoral cycles. A NEWSLETTER FOR YOU Friday, 8.30 am Asean Business Business insights centering on South-east Asia's fast-growing economies. Sign Up Sign Up Singapore's Strategy Group, established in 2015 under the Prime Minister's Office, coordinates complex issues cutting across ministry boundaries. This enables the policy integration seen in SG60: using immediate economic relief to support medium-term business development while building long-term cultural assets. The CSF's 'Early Warning Systems' analyse risks and build response capabilities before crises emerge. This forward-looking approach is also reflected in the SG60 charity matching funds, which strengthen community capacity to reduce future fiscal burdens while creating opportunities for impact investment and corporate social responsibility partnerships. Why other systems struggle with long-term planning Most democratic systems face structural challenges in maintaining policy continuity across electoral transitions. The UK's experience illustrates these challenges. Despite operating a Foresight unit for more than 20 years, major infrastructure projects like HS2, a new highspeed railway, face discontinuity pressures when new administrations reassess predecessors' commitments. Long-term projects are vulnerable to partisan politics, making them subject to cancellation when power changes hands. Singapore's system faces the same five-year electoral cycle but has developed institutional mechanisms that insulate strategic planning from political disruption. The continuity comes from strong technocratic institutions, sustained electoral mandate, and a political culture that prioritises long-term national outcomes over short-term political positioning. Singapore's electorate has consistently demonstrated remarkable policy patience, re-electing leaders based on long-term performance rather than demanding immediate gratification. This electoral patience allows leaders to make genuinely strategic decisions without the populist pressures that constrain policymaking in many democracies. In Singapore, new leaders inherit and build upon existing strategic frameworks, ensuring policy continuity that transcends individual political careers while maintaining democratic legitimacy through regular electoral validation. Continued payoffs The business implications of this multi-generational strategy are direct. The SG60 Culture Pass, for instance, encourages arts engagement and builds long-term consumption habits, creating predictable customer pipelines for creative industries and cultural enterprises. Similarly, Singapore's charity matching approach through the S$250 million SG Gives grant fosters a robust philanthropic ecosystem, opening new avenues for corporate partnerships and impact investing. For multinational corporations, Singapore's temporal sovereignty offers rare planning certainty. Institutional continuity enables businesses to make longer term investments with confidence in policy stability. The hawker centre modernisation program, for example, provides construction, technology, and hospitality companies with predictable pipeline opportunities across decades. The evolution of statecraft and global implications Singapore's temporal sovereignty represents genuine innovation in governance theory. Traditional sovereignty assumed control of physical territory and populations. The city-state has pioneered systematic governance across time dimensions that enables proactive rather than reactive policy approaches. For businesses operating globally, Singapore's model suggests the competitive advantages of countries that can provide policy certainty across extended time horizons. As supply chains become more complex and investment cycles longer, jurisdictions offering predictable regulatory environments will attract increasing capital flows. Effective modern governance requires the ability to optimise across multiple time horizons while maintaining social cohesion and economic dynamism. Singapore's institutional innovations – embedding strategic planning, creating policy continuity mechanisms, and designing multi-generational strategies – provide valuable models for governance evolution. In an era of increasing global uncertainty, Singapore's mastery of temporal sovereignty offers both a competitive model for governments and a stable foundation for business planning across extended time horizons. Singapore's six decades of sustained growth, social stability, and crisis resilience demonstrate that temporal sovereignty delivers superior outcomes for citizens and businesses alike. The writer is a legal academic affiliated with the Singapore University of Social Sciences, University of Reading, Cambridge C-EENRG, and NUS APCEL. He is also a lawyer at RHTLaw Asia
Straits Times
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Straits Times
Donating to charity? The arts need your support too
Not just the state, but all of us have a role to play on this stage. What do we need to do to inspire more people from all walks of life to donate? 'Can use culture pass to buy Yakult?' So goes a comment from the HardwareZone forum on a government arts incentive – the SG Culture Pass. This gives every Singapore citizen aged 18 and above $100 worth of credits to spend on arts and cultural events – but unfortunately for the commenter, not cultured drinks.
AsiaOne
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- AsiaOne
Singaporeans can use SG Culture Pass credits for over 200 arts and heritage events from September, Lifestyle News
Locals can look forward to immersing themselves even more into the nation's arts and heritage scene later this year. Singaporeans will be able to use their $100 SG Culture Pass credits on at least 200 arts and heritage programmes when it launches in September, the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth (MCCY) announced today (June 13). This will include a variety of activities and events ranging from performances and tours to exhibitions and workshops, and will provide a total ticket capacity of more than 700,000. The full list of SG Culture Pass offerings will be available on the official website at from September and will be updated regularly to reflect new programmes. MCCY will also continue to accept programme applications from the arts and heritage sector. The deadline to submit applications to be part of the first wave of programmes launched under the SG Culture Pass is June 30, and new programmes will be considered on a rolling basis until 2028. The SG Culture Pass initiative was first announced in February during Prime Minister Lawrence Wong's Budget 2025 speech, in which the government announced that every Singaporean aged 18 and above will receive $100 worth of SG Culture Pass credits to offset ticket costs to local arts and heritage events. The initiative is to encourage attendance for local arts and heritage activities. View this post on Instagram A post shared by The Intan (@theintansg) Some examples of activities and programmes under the SG Culture Pass include The Intan Tea Experience, a heritage learning tour where participants can experience Peranakan culture through its collections and sampling Nyonya kuehs in a private museum with founder Alvin Yapp. Another is HeyCyann's Jrawing with Jagua workshop on beginner-friendly jagua semi-permanent tattoo art. For those who enjoy sitting back and enjoying the show, there's also Nam Hwa Opera Limited's The Legend of White Snake theatre performance, where four major Chinese opera genres are combined to tell the Chinese classic love story of a white snake spirit and mortal man. Semarak Seni 2025 is a dance performance by Sri Warisan Som Said Performing Arts. Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre (SCCC) will also offer programmes and workshops for both young and old. For the seniors, their Happy Sing Along music concert will happen twice each month and will feature Mandarin and dialect songs performed by local artistes. SCCC will also have a regular series of activities and workshops to encourage family bonding and help them learn the Chinese language like an Egg Tart Making Workshop and Gift of Theatre Parent-Child Bonding Workshop. SG Culture Pass currently has five authorised ticketing partners: BookMyShow, Sistic, GlobalTix, Klook and Pelago. David Neo, Acting Minister for Culture, Community and Youth and Senior Minister of State for Education, said in a statement that he is "very heartened that various arts and heritage partners have enthusiastically participated in the SG Culture pass initiative". "Together, we can make Singapore arts and heritage flourish and thrive even more," he added. [[nid:716075]]
Straits Times
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Straits Times
S'poreans can use $100 SG Culture Pass credits for over 200 arts and heritage events: MCCY
Singaporeans aged 18 and above will be able to use their $100 worth of credits under the SG Culture Pass to participate in events such as the Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre's Happy Sing-Along. PHOTO: SINGAPORE CHINESE CULTURAL CENTRE S'poreans can use $100 SG Culture Pass credits for over 200 arts and heritage events: MCCY SINGAPORE – Come September , Singaporeans aged 18 and above will be able to use their $100 worth of credits under the SG Culture Pass to participate in more than 200 arts and heritage programmes, the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth (MCCY) announced on June 13. Currently, the confirmed programmes provide a total ticket capacity of over 700,000 and more programmes are in the works. The deadline for groups and individuals to submit applications to be part of the SG Culture Pass for the scheme's Sept 1 launch is June 30, and new programmes will be considered on a rolling basis until 2028. Confirmed programmes include The Legend Of White Snake, a theatre performance by Nam Hwa Opera Limited; Semarak Seni 2025, a dance performance by Sri Warisan Som Said Performing Arts; Happy Sing-Along , a monthly programme featuring Mandarin and dialect songs by Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre; as well as art and heritage workshops by soya sauce-maker Nanyang Sauce and art jamming venue Artify Studio. Mr Alex Chua, co-founder of Book Bar in Duxton Road, told The Straits Times that his bookstore will also be participating in the scheme – with Singapore literature titles eligible for purchase using the credits. According to posters by Arts House Limited, tickets to the Singapore Writers Festival, which runs from Nov 7 to 16, can also be purchased with the credits. The five authorised ticketing partners for the SG Culture Pass are BookMyShow, Sistic, GlobalTix, Klook and Pelago. MCCY has not yet announced the logistics for credit redemption, and warned that any message offering redemption before September is fraudulent. Mr David Neo, Acting Minister for Culture, Community and Youth and Senior Minister of State for Education, said in a statement: 'The arts and heritage define who we are as Singaporeans. The Government is fully committed to develop the local arts and heritage sector, not just through direct resourcing, but also in stepping up audience development efforts, to benefit the whole sector.' A total of $300 million has been set aside for the SG Culture Pass initiative announced at Budget 2025 to encourage Singaporeans to attend local performances, exhibitions and experiences. It is the first incentive of its kind here to target the arts and heritage sector. Shawn Hoo is a journalist on the arts beat at The Straits Times. He covers books, theatre and the visual arts. Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
