In its unique role as an arts centre located within a university, NUS Centre For the Arts is positioned as a conduit in bridging disciplinary knowledge and collaborative arts practice. Our programmes are designed to integrate the arts into the University life, offering opportunities for discovery, active exchange and dialogue among those engaged in artistic and academic inquiry within the University and beyond.
Talent // Programming
Vibrant performing
arts calendar
Year-round, we curate, produce and present a rich calendar of events ranging across the performing arts that entertain and engage the senses while provoking critical thinking about the issues of the day.
Our calendar’s highlight is the NUS Arts Festival, the flagship celebration of the arts on campus. Collaborative practice is at the heart of its programming. Working with local and international practitioners and other student artists, students are encouraged to avail themselves to the content-rich environment within the university, grounding their work in cutting-edge knowledge. Since the festival’s inauguration in 2006, we have worked across numerous disciplines and on topics as wide-ranging as biomedical ethics, digital culture, and quantum technologies.
Beyond the festival, the admission-free ExxonMobil Campus Concert Series, supported by ExxonMobil Asia Pacific Pte Ltd since 1986, presents a diverse slate of artists from newcomers to professional practitioners. Firmly established on campus, the series seeks to foster a vibrant space for experimentation, practice and creation, while inviting audiences to engage with new artists and works.
We also engage and drive a buzzing campus arts scene through our 22 arts excellence groups and annual performance showcases. The start of each academic year is heralded by the HERE! Arts Carnival, a night party that brings together the best of campus arts in vibrant themed spaces throughout the iconic University Cultural Centre.
The power of the arts lies in its ability to encourage hearts and transform lives. Our student groups work with hospitals, low income communities and marginalized sectors of the community to present performances, workshops and other activities as part of Cheers, an outreach programme driven by the impulse to give back to the community.
Exhibitions and
programmes
at NUS Museum
Seeking to conceive relevant and engaging exhibitions and programmes, NUS Museum collaborates with partners both within and external to the university. Public programmes conceived in relation to exhibitions include talk series such as Curating Nation, Grounded Conversations and Presenting Portraiture, film screening series such as the Malaya Black and White film series, hands-on workshops for children during the school holidays and other workshops, including Writing Lab 2014, a mentorship programme guiding students to develop short plays that draw from, refer to, or intersect with the collections of the NUS Museum.
Since 2009, the Museum has initiated three editions of Curating Lab, a curatorial development programme for young and emerging curators. Each edition of Curating Lab is aimed at developing the participants’ curatorial skills and critical thinking capabilities, providing exposure to the regional arts scene and facilitating access to curatorial practitioners. Among the participants that have passed through these programmes, many have gone on to embark on careers as curators and archivists, librarians and arts administrators or to continue furthering their research and studies in curatorial and museum studies.