New $20m grant for multicultural arts; 5-year NIE study on how the arts affect students’ brains

SINGAPORE – Arts practitioners can soon draw from a new $20 million multicultural arts programme grant from the second half of 2026, according to newly released details in the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth’s (MCCY) budget.

The new grant, seeded by the President’s Challenge with contributions from MCCY, spans five years and supports artists who integrate other cultures’ practices into their work.

It can sponsor productions, and also go towards training. Examples the ministry gave include residencies, research projects, conferences and youth mentorships.

In detailing the plans during the debate on his ministry’s budget on March 5, Minister of State for Culture, Community and Youth Baey Yam Keng said multiculturalism, as the bedrock of what it meant to be Singaporean, is particularly important now with societies fragmenting around the world.

He said in Parliament: “It is therefore critical that we strengthen our cross-cultural understanding and deepen our shared identity... We can do more to support cross-cultural artistic creations that are sophisticated, innovative, high-quality, and that are uniquely Singapore.”

The creation of the multicultural arts programme grant is very much a response to arts practitioners’ own interests and the mature use of diverse traditions in their work, according to those in the know. Whereas in earlier years, multicultural work sometimes manifested in a rote checklist of Chinese, Malay, Indian and Others arts, it is today an organic calling card of Singapore artists.

For example, for the Huayi – Chinese Festival of Arts at the Esplanade on March 6 and 7, The Finger Players’ artistic director Oliver Chong has tapped a Malay folktale of a princess transforming into an orang utan for puppet production Tall Tales: Bananas & Ang Ku Kuehs.

Another example is Indian dance company Apsaras Arts’ Arisi: Rice (2022), which brought traditional Balinese dancers and Singapore Chinese Orchestra musicians together to pay tribute to rice in Asian cuisines. The work also included documentary footage of foreign migrant workers in Singapore returning to their own farmlands in India.

Open calls for the multicultural arts programme grant will be held annually, and applicants must be Singapore citizens or permanent residents who already actively contribute to the local arts scene. A President’s Challenge multiculturalism panel will be formed to steer arts initiatives related to multiculturalism. The Straits Times has asked for the list of panel members.

The grant is part of a concerted push in the arts budget in 2026 to promote multicultural arts. The National Arts Council (NAC) has increased the number of arts education programmes that nurture appreciation of Singapore’s multicultural identity in schools by 35 per cent from 2025 to close to 300 options now.

NAC is also commissioning arts groups to develop multicultural arts programmes for pre-schools, with the aim of reaching 100 per cent of government-supported pre-schools by 2027.

These schemes are also a way of getting more people to pay attention to the traditional arts, which have seen a decline in interest among the young, said Acting Minister for Culture, Community and Youth David Neo.

“While I understand the allure of K-pop and K-drama, we also need to retain our diverse traditional art forms and culture that form the foundation of our multicultural identity.”

The other major reveal for the arts during the debate is a new five-year study of at least 2,400 secondary school students commissioned by MCCY.

The study, involving regular surveys and some brain scans, wants to gather Singapore-specific data on how exposure to the arts affects young people’s creative potential over time and helps their well-being, including implications for mental health and resilience.

Participating students will join activities that are “focused on creative expression, collaborative creation, and skill development in music and dance”, and have various metrics logged over their schooling years.

The National Institute of Education leads the project titled ACES – or Arts for Cultivating Creativity, Emotional and Social Outcomes – that also involves NAC and the Esplanade. Armed with these statistics on practical benefits, schools could in the future more conscientiously design and include arts programmes in mainstream education to tackle degrading mental health and rote thinking.

MCCY told ST that six schools have so far confirmed their participation and that another five have expressed interest, without naming them.

Mr Baey said NAC has also partnered SingHealth Community Hospitals and the Agency for Integrated Care to research how the arts impacts seniors’ well-being.

Four MPs – Workers’ Party Non-Constituency MP Eileen Chong, Nominated MPs Terence Ho and Kenneth Goh, and Ms Gho Sze Kee (Mountbatten) – asked questions relating to the arts on March 5, with concerns including the implementation of the SG Culture Pass, the use of the arts in cultural diplomacy, and better career support for artists.

NAC’s estimated budget for financial year 2026 is $176.7 million, up from $159 million in the previous financial year, with some $10.8 million expected to be spent on the redevelopment of 45 Armenian Street, 222 Queen Street and 51 Waterloo Street for arts housing.

The arts and heritage programme budget is down from $293 million in 2025 to $254 million in 2026. This includes a retrofitting of a former Singapore Art Museum building in Bras Basah – now being studied as a venue for a new Singapore Design Museum – costing $7.6 million.