A playful celebration of creativity and collaboration
The SMU Arts Fest 2024 embraced the theme of “PLAY”, celebrating the joy, spontaneity and boundless possibilities that playfulness can bring to both art and life.
Running from 30 August to 13 September, the festival saw nearly 20,000 attendees across the festival’s five events – a significant increase from 2023’s 13,726-strong crowd.
The festival featured a whimsical blend of nostalgic elements that were cleverly repurposed, as well as lively cross-disciplinary collaborations to create a vibrant experience – all made possible by 470 participants – students, alumni and guest performers, on stage and behind the scenes.
It also marked SMU’s second year of collaboration with the Singapore Night Festival (SNF), with programming on the SMU Green, including F&B services and the introduction of visual and performing arts coming together to create a dynamic experience for audiences. In the process, student participants also benefitted from the various learning opportunities as they took part in performances or honed their event organisational skills.
A larger role in collaboration with SNF
While the National Heritage Board (NHB) remains at the helm of the SNF, SMU has become the youth hub of the SNF since 2023.
“We come in as people who deal with students 365 days a year, and an opportunity to help NHB plug that gap and connect with the youths better during the festival,” said Japheth Ng, SMU Arts Fest co-festival director. “It makes sense to collaborate and pool our resources, and continue building this partnership from what we started last year.
Weetz Seah, SMU Arts Fest festival director and head, Arts and Creative Experience, said: “We did a lot of the leg work last year, with plenty of teething problems and an uphill climb because it was the first time we’d collaborated on such a scale. We were aiming to create a template for success in future editions, by setting an example.
“We proved we knew what we were doing, NHB gave us more funding this year and more leeway to organise things, such as how we took ownership of the festival village on the Campus Green. In the future, we’ll be even more ambitious – we plan to get all seven universities in Singapore involved and working together.”
Art and play
The first of the five events for SMU Arts Fest 2024 was “Play Back” on SMU Campus Green, presented as part of the SNF. Performances took place on the first two weekend evenings of SMU Arts Fest 2024.
SMU Eurhythmix lit up the stage with their electrifying energy at PLAY BACK.
Spanning the 1960s to the 2000s, each element of the show was designed to evoke a sense of playful nostalgia in the audience as they enjoyed spectacles inspired by schoolyard games, Singapore heartlands and the entertainment of earlier decades.
Another event was “Free Play”, an enchanting, immersive, outdoor installation inspired by Singapore’s iconic dragon playground. The installation was open for all to visit throughout the first two weeks of SMU Arts Fest 2024.
FREE PLAY, an installation inspired by the iconic dragon playground, came to life through participants’ collaborative contributions.
The third event, “Game Play”, was a theatrical production inspired by the tabletop game “Dungeons & Dragons”. Interactive play was integrated into the performance. It put the audience at the heart of the action as actors and stunt performers brought to life an epic story of unlikely heroes confronting monsters and unravelling mysteries, .
SMU’s orchestra and choir came together to deliver an unforgettable concert experience with "Screen Play." The performance transported the audience into the world of film fantasy, blending cinematic scores with stunning visuals projected on the screen of the School of the Arts (SOTA) Concert Hall. Classic themes from movies like Jurassic Park and the joyful tunes of ABBA's Mamma Mia merged seamlessly, creating a captivating fusion of sight and sound.
SMU Arts Fest 2024 also invited participants to hear from visionary startup founders who transformed their love for the arts into a thriving business
Organised in conjunction with SMU’s Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, “Don’t (Just) Play Play” saw these founders sharing their journeys of turning their artistic passions to the next level, by making it their livelihood –This session was indeed an inspiring reminder that, with the right mindset and backing, it’s possible for play to pay.
See also: SMU Arts Fest 2024: PLAY | SMU Newsroom
