Across the globe, the arts and culture have been identified as key instruments for urban rejuvenation and global competitiveness. Asia is no exception – over the last twenty years, there has been a proliferation of large-scale arts and cultural infrastructure, as well as an energetic bubbling of artist-led initiatives in cities such as Singapore, Jakarta, Hong Kong and Seoul.
This course aims to explore the growing and diversified roles of “arts” and “culture” in contemporary global urbanism, and to interrogate how categories such as “arts” and “culture” can transform cities. In particular, this course will focus on the changing conditions and challenges of the arts and culture in today’s global and urban landscape, with a focus on the role of Singapore in the Asian region during this time of rapid change, global complexity and increasing austerity.
Through an analysis of a range of real-world case studies and experiential learning, students will critically consider questions such as: What are the roles of arts and culture in cities today? Can the arts and culture become key drivers of urban growth, enabling cities to forge and maintain global connections? Do they differentiate cities, and generate distinctive place-identities amidst a globalising world? How do art events and exhibitions like biennales influence cultural and city development, and give rise to more diverse, reflective and vibrant societies? Can the arts and culture create, reinforce and enhance sense of place and belonging in global cities, especially for the less privileged? What are some of the particularities and specificities of the arts within cities in the Asia-Pacific region?
Ultimately, this course aspires to provide students with a reflexive understanding of the unique arts ecologies in today’s global landscape, and a heightened appreciation of the significance of the arts to urban processes, practices and everyday life.
The primary focus of this course will be on urban cultural planning, with a focus on critically
interrogating the recent popularity of “creative placemaking.”
This focus will be contextualised within a wider exploration of the arts and its urban environment,
through an entanglement of actors. Key questions include:
- How have the arts and culture emerged as an urban planning and development target in cities across the globe?
- What are the shared global strategies and what is unique in the purposes, practices and outcomes of urban cultural planning in Singapore?
- What is the place of the arts in community based urban development today?
- What is the relationship - and disconnects - between cultural planning efforts and the on-the-ground life and needs of arts and cultural activities?
- How can artists, planners and community development practitioners employ the arts to promote positive and inclusive change while addressing the agency of those they address?
Students who complete this course should acquire the following course-specific skills :
- A critical understanding of the development of cultural planning approaches globally, with the ability to highlight central assumptions, global trends and practices, and local peculiarities
- A sound grasp of the major scholarly approaches to, and debates on, urban cultural planning and urban cultural economies, and the ability to contextualise them in relation to specific instances and case studies
- A critical ability to question the role of the arts in urban regeneration and revitalisation, and the consequences and repercussions
- An inter-disciplinary comprehension of the use of the arts for global urban competitiveness, such as biennales, cultural districts and blockbusters, and how they relate to different spaces and communities