Committee of Supply – Head X (Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth)

Head X (cont) –

Resumption of Debate on Question [7 March 2024].

"That the total sum to be allocated for Head X of the Estimates be reduced by $100." – [Mr Sitoh Yih Pin].

Question again proposed.

The Chairman: Minister Edwin Tong.

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The Minister for Culture, Community and Youth (Mr Edwin Tong Chun Fai): Over the last few days we have discussed and debated many serious policy announcements in this House: from tackling immediate cost of living issues and concerns; creating good jobs for Singaporeans; reshaping our economy; to meeting housing demands; reimagining the future of education; and our response to climate change, to name a few. Many of these are policies which strike at the heart of Singapore's long-term interests. And these are very important matters for Singapore and Singaporeans, and some are even existential ones.

Sir, we must get these policies right and we must obtain Singaporeans' support for them. But equally important is for us to achieve them together: as one people, united in our cause with a collective vision and a shared aspiration for Singapore's future. And that is the spirit of Forward Singapore (Forward SG), led by Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence. Which brings to my mind an old African proverb: if you want to go fast, go alone; but if you want to go far, go together.

Indeed, Sir, we have to go together. Our unity has been our strength behind every success in our history. Few societies in the world have succeeded in societal harmony, let alone one that is as richly diverse as ours. According to a post-pandemic survey by the Pew Research Centre, Singapore was amongst a small minority of countries that grew more united after the pandemic.

In today's increasingly divided world, fraught with war, rising inequality, misinformation, populist movements, political disenchantment, this unity is all the more rare and precious. It is ours to cherish and protect if Singapore is to succeed in our next chapter. And that is why it is fitting that the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth (MCCY) brings up the end of the Committee of Supply debates.

Our work is diverse: from developing the arts and sports; stewarding our treasured heritage; empowering our youths; corporates and community; to give back; care for others; and come together to build Singapore. At the heart of everything we do is our goal to foster unity, cohesion and that unique Singaporean identity. This underscores all that we do at MCCY.

And it is the powerful unifying force that helps us transcend our differences. We have seen this come to life when we rallied behind our national heroes in sports and in the arts.

Dr Syed Harun yesterday made a very impassioned speech, noting that when Joseph Schooling won his Olympic gold medal, or when Loh Kean Yew became world champion, or when Shanti took on the very best in Asia and beat them all, we all remember and cherish those moments, we feel proud of their sporting achievements; but even prouder because each of these athletes represents something in each of us and, collectively, as Singaporeans, and it ignites our shared Singapore spirit.

In the same way, our history is brightly lit with the many cultural icons who have inspired and united us. Dr Iskandar Jalil is a master at pottery, but he also creates poetry with his hands. The late Santha Bhaskar, who exemplified a deep appreciation for diversity, embodied multiculturalism throughout her life's work.

Beyond sporting and artistic successes, though, these stories also teach us about strength, resilience, creativity and excellence; inspiring present and future generations to dream big in a pursuit of excellence. And that is why even in difficult times, it is so important that we continue to cultivate and nurture and develop our sportsmen and our artists. So, Sir, in my response, I will set out the broad overarching framework of MCCY's efforts in these areas. My colleagues will develop the details further in their speeches – Minister of State Low Yen Ling on the arts; Minister of State Alvin Tan on the giving space as well as our youths; and Senior Parliamentary Secretary Eric Chua on sports.

Sir, let me start with sports. Our most basic goal is to drive interest and participation in sports. There are obvious strong social benefits, from keeping active and fit to encouraging intermixing and through that, strengthening our bonds and our social cohesion. It is also the basic building block to finding that next wave of high-performing athletes. A broader base leads to a stronger and more sustained pipeline for talent. Singaporeans are already getting more active in sporting. According to a national survey by Sport Singapore (SportSG), sport participation among Singapore residents risen from 54% in 2015 to an all-time high of 74% in 2022. The sports participation rate for persons with disabilities also nearly doubled from 28% to 54%, in the same period. Sir, it is encouraging, but we want to do more to broaden sporting participation in the community with a number of initiatives.

First, through accessible sport programmes in the community. Our young can, today, join sports co-curricular activities (CCAs). They can also take part in junior sports academy programmes in primary schools, ActiveSG programmes or even take part in private academies and clubs. Members will recall that last year we topped-up the ActiveSG credits, so that these credits can be used to defray the cost of courses run by ActiveSG at any of their programmes. Even if young people do not come from well-to-do backgrounds, SportCares is a programme that is set up to enable children from low-income families to also be included.

For example, the SportCares bursary covers seasonal participation fees for nine ActiveSG academies and clubs the entire season – covered by the bursary. Other programmes, like the Saturday Night Lights football programme, helps to equip youths with holistic life skills using sport, in this case, football as a medium. At the grassroots level, Singaporeans from all walks of life can take part in exciting community-level competitions and games.

Members might remember the inter-constituency games. They were very popular. So, I am very pleased to announce that this year, People's Association (PA), working with SportSG, will bring back the popular inter-constituency as well as inter-GRC community championship as part of Pesta Sukan, which means Festival of Sport. The community championship will focus on five popular sports to begin with – badminton, basketball, football, pickleball and table tennis. Teams will compete under the banner of their constituency, with a final round amongst the GRCs to determine the national champion. This will no doubt add some competitive spirit in community games.

Second, we have been working on having more sporting facilities close to where Singaporeans live. In many Housing and Development Board (HDB) estates, there are now free-to-play facilities like basketball or futsal courts. You see many of them. Some of them are fenced up so that you can protect passersby from a stray ball.

In many of them, there are also badminton or sepak takraw courts, which sometimes also doubles up as pickleball courts. In addition, we are also building up an island-wide network of world-class sporting facilities right in your neighbourhood. One example is the Toa Payoh Integrated Development in the heart of a mature town. This new development will have top-notch sporting facilities to cater to a range of activities.

This will benefit not only the athletes who train there, but also heartlanders, both young and old, who come together, play and bond through sport. There are many more other developments coming soon at the heartlands in Punggol, Clementi, Queenstown, Ang Mo Kio and Hougang.

Third, we recognise that Singaporeans are interested in a broader range of diverse sports, some of which might not yet have mainstream appeal. So, we will do our best to broaden the options for Singaporeans to pursue a wider range of sports. This is why we extended the One Team Singapore Fund (OTSF) to 2027, as the Deputy Prime Minister announced and will be expanding the scope for donations eligible for one-to-one matching. This will catalyse even more support for our national athletes.

Mr Mohd Fahmi Aliman and Mr Darryl David spoke about this and they will be pleased to know that with OTSF, we will do more for emerging sports that are gaining traction in the community and where our athletes also do well on the international stage. These additional resources will also mean that these sports can encourage more grassroots participation and broaden the base, as I noted earlier. Senior Parliamentary Secretary Eric will speak more about the expansion of OTSF to include SportCares.

Next, Sir, sports is for all. And as we talk about growing the base of participation, we also want to ensure that persons with disabilities (PwDs), are included. Over the years, SportSG has retrofitted swimming pools with ramps for wheelchairs at eight ActiveSG sport centres, with two more pools being retrofitted by 2025 and we have built eight inclusive ActiveSG gyms.

We are also on track to make all ActiveSG gyms inclusive by 2026. Having the hardware and the physical set-up to accommodate PwDs is a good step forward, but we cannot just be satisfied that a PwD can navigate the pool and gyms with barrier-free access and then think that, that is enough and stop there. We have to go further and support them with inclusive programming to build a community and to also have appropriately trained coaches to run these programmes.

Today, when you visit our facilities, you can tap into a range of disability sport and inclusive sport programmes and services. For example, more than 3,000 individuals have attended disability awareness training and various coaching and technical courses to better support the PwDs' participation in sport, to allow them to take part actively in the programmes.

They will also Learn-to-Play Programmes, such as Yes! I Can and Play-Ability Festivals, where both persons with disabilities as well as persons without those disabilities can come together and play sports together, and take part in sports, such as swimming, badminton, basketball, archery and shooting.

SportSG is also developing an inclusive Train the Trainer programme, which will be a more structured programme to equip fitness instructors with the relevant skills to guide PwDs and recommend appropriate, suitable exercises for them. We therefore fully agree with Mr Ong Hwa Han that beyond just setting up the hardware, what matters is how empowered PwDs feel when they exercise in the public setting and come to our gyms and come to our pools at ActiveSG.

Senior Parliamentary Secretary Eric Chua will elaborate more about our initiatives to make sports even more accessible to all. So, let me turn next to high-performance sports.

Overall, Team SG athletes have done well in 2023. To give you some highlights: in the 2023 Southeast Asian Games (SEA Games), Team Singapore brought home 158 medals and ranked sixth overall. There were also eight Games records, 17 national records and 40 personal bests achieved by Team Singapore.

But what is even more encouraging is that we continue to field a young team. Athletes under the age of 24 made up the majority of the contingent and they delivered outstanding performances. Also, critically, 30% of our gold medals were won by debutant athletes at the SEA Games. That gives us tremendous optimism moving forward.

In the Asian Para Games 2023, our athletes delivered their best away performance of all time. With eight medals, they shattered collectively, nine national records – including two Asian Paralympics records and achieved 12 personal bests. We now have our sights set on the next major Games for the year, which will be the Olympics and Paralympics in Paris.

Many Members have spoken about how we support our elite athletes in high-performance sports. So, let me come back to this point. We are constantly on a mission to find our next sporting champion and to create as many options and pathways as possible for athletes to reach their peak. Champions like Singapore kitefoiler Maximilian Maeder, who is one of the Team Singapore athletes who will be at the Olympics this year. He won a gold at the Formula Kite Youth World Championship in July 2023.

He followed that on with a gold in the Asian Games, winning all 16 of his races on his way to that gold medal. He is the first Singaporean to be nominated World Sailings' Male Sailor of the Year. He is all of 16, going on 17 years old. He is leaving this evening for further training in Europe in preparation for the Olympics. We wish him well.

For athletes competing at the world level like Maximilian and others like Kean Yew and Shanti, we give them the highest level of support. Let me just sketch out for members what that means. They are all on the highest tier of the Sports Excellence (spex) programme, which provides a monthly stipend to the athletes. This is so that they can be full-time athletes and free from distractions. On top of this, we also provide funding for their training and their travel overseas for competitions, or indeed, even if the competition is in Singapore here.

They are further supported by a sports science team in areas, such as sport biomechanics, nutrition, sports psychology, physiotherapy and physiology as well. We work with them on a curated coaching programme: help them with their diet, with sleep, with recovery, with preparation; just about everything that we need to get an athlete in peak performance. We will continue to strongly support their quest for sporting excellence, as Mr Darryl David and Dr Syed Harun mentioned.

But for every athlete who has found success, there will be many more, just below at the next tier, aspiring to find their next peak. We will endeavour to support them on their journey too. Let me just broadly sketch out what we do for them.

I spoke earlier about broadening the base, and I think this is a critical starting point if we want a strong and sustained pipeline of talent coming through for Singapore. We, therefore, work with the national sports associations (NSAs), with schools, as well as with private sporting academies, to identify and track good talent, give them a structured framework for development, with good coaching and mentorship.

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Our second key strategy is then to put these talents through a structured development pathway, with a comprehensive support programme either by Sports Science Institute or by the NSA. Take, for example, the Singapore Table Tennis Association (STTA).

Their Junior Development Squad (JDS) is one good example. Over the years, they built up a strong pipeline of local talents. We now have Koen Pang, we have Zhou Jingyi and we have Izaac Quek, all graduating from STTA's JDS.

STTA and the Singapore Sports School also work closely together to set up the School Within a School programme. This programme enables our student table tennis athletes to get extended training twice a day, with a customised academic support programme that is worked around their sporting needs. So, if they need to make up classes, they need to do courses outside of competition period, this programme helps them to catch up, helps them to keep on par with their classmates.

We invest not just in the training of our athletes, but also support their sporting journey throughout their education and, eventually, their employment as well. For athletes still in school, the spexEducation programme helps them manage, both sport and education, by supporting them with school admissions, scholarships and also trying to schedule classes around trainings and competitions.

For athletes who have finished with school and are seeking to enter the workforce, they can apply to our spexBusiness partners, and they include corporates, like Grab, CapitaLand, DBS and Quest Ventures. We have a programme with these employers, so that our athletes can work with them but enjoy flexible work arrangements to accommodate training and competition.

They also provide employment to ex-Team Singapore athletes and, to date, 400 athletes have been hired under the spexBusiness programme.

But of course, we can do more and we can encourage more corporates to come onto the programme, because this programme is really as strong as the number of corporates who enter the programme with us.

In addition, when athletes need to go for training, even if they are not on the spexBusiness programme, there is spexTAG, which stands for spex Training Allowance Grants, to help athletes defray training costs. And for those who miss work while training for or competing or taking part in overseas competitions and major games, spexGLOW offsets lost wages. So, this is the programme that we have to support an athlete on their path, even as they manage work and school together, with training for their sport.

In addition, from August 2024, the spexPotential programme will support more young athletes trying to make the transition to the next level. I spoke earlier about how we had good young athletes at SEA Games, debutants who won a third of our gold medals.[Please refer to "Clarification by Minister for Culture, Community and Youth", Official Report, 7 March 2024, Vol 95, Issue 132, Correction By Written Statement section.]

Our spexScholarship, the one I just mentioned, has been very successful. But the bar for acquiring that spexScholarship can be high – often benchmarked at Asian Games medal potential. This could mean that an athlete might sometimes be less supported earlier on in their journey. So, the spexPotential programme is a new one that bridges this gap, allows more athletes with potential to be supported at an earlier stage of their sporting career.

spexPotential will provide both financial, as well as programmatic support – such as coaching, overseas training and competition, local training, sports science, sports medicine, as well as equipment – for our junior athletes. This will give them even more support to realise their potential.

Next, let me turn to Mr Xie Yao Quan and Mr Sitoh Yih Pin, who asked about our plans for Sports Hub. I have spoken at some length earlier this week on the Sports Hub and will not repeat the points.

Let me just reiterate that our vision of the Sports Hub is to establish Singapore and the Sports Hub as the leading sports and entertainment destination in the region, inculcate a strong sense of affinity between Singaporeans and the Sports Hub, and also maximise the synergies across the suite of facilities that we have at Kallang Alive. Kallang Alive is a bigger precinct, Sports Hub occupies about a third or so of that space. So, we have got a lot more potential at Kallang Alive.

Against that backdrop, Mr Xie says that we should continue to bring major sporting events to Singapore. We agree. The Government will invest S$165 million in the Major Sports Events Fund over the next four years to do this.

The Sports Hub is already well poised to host many of these events. In addition to the suite of facilities within the Kallang Alive precinct, such as OCBC Arena and the Aquatic Centre, there will be new facilities ready soon, like the Kallang Football Hub and the Kallang Tennis Centre. The latter includes 12 outdoor, seven indoor and two mini tennis courts, that will complement the facilities at the Sports Hub, as we plan for more world-class sporting events at the Sports Hub.

For our TeamSG athletes, hosting such events will also mean more opportunities for them to compete. They get more wild cards when the event is held in Singapore and they test themselves, measure themselves up against some of the world's best, right here, on our home ground.

Sir, there are immense benefits beyond those attributable to our athletes alone. Singaporeans will also get to watch more of the world's best athletes in action, adding to an already vibrant sporting calendar.

It also boosts economic growth and global recognition, possibly unlocking latent potential in hosting entertainment and sporting events, and concurrently strengthening Singapore's reputation as a choice destination for high-signature international events.

This segues nicely into Mr Sitoh's point about the Singapore Indoor Stadium, or the SIS. The hosting of high-quality international events is valuable and also highly sought after. Our competitors are not standing still and we, likewise, must continually innovate and evolve if we want to continue to attract top-tier events.

The SIS is part of the Sports Hub, but it was built in 1989 and is now more than 30 years old. Since then, others around the region have refreshed their facilities, with new, modern indoor arenas that are state of the art.

So, we believe that it is now an opportune time to develop a new indoor arena that will be amongst the best-in-class globally. We have gone around to study some of the best arenas in the world, to learn from them. We are considering an arena that can host more sophisticated events, that can also flexibly accommodate different types of events and have a faster turnaround time between the different types of events. It will be different between sports and entertainment and you have to turn it around very quickly. And also, an arena that offers greater value to spectators, such as more varied hospitality suites, better seating and a better overall experience for the spectator.

We are considering for this new arena to be developed adjacent to the current SIS site. This location will continue to give the new arena a synergistic connection to the rest of the Sports Hub and Kallang, and also allow us to plan events and programming as an entire precinct, benefiting from the economies of scale.

It will also allow the current SIS to operate until the new indoor arena is operational and this minimises disruption to the pipeline of events and programming, which can continue throughout the construction period for the new arena.

We will study plans for the SIS and provide more details when it is ready. We are currently studying the capacity of this new indoor arena, taking into account existing and upcoming venues. It should, in our view, have at least the same capacity as the current SIS and also be future-proofed, so that it can continue to serve Singapore's interests in the foreseeable future.

The new indoor arena will operate alongside the rest of the Sports Hub, offering synergies with the other sporting and community facilities at the Kallang Alive precinct, and also seek to inject further vibrancy into the precinct.

Sir, let me now move on to our arts and culture sector. Ms Usha Chandradas made an impassioned speech yesterday evening and asked about our plans to transform and grow the arts ecosystem.

Sir, like sports, which I spent some time on, the arts and culture have the innate power to inspire, challenge and connect people. To quote one of our Cultural Medallion recipients, poet Prof Edwin Thumboo, he says "Art, whatever its form, helps to define the texture, the rhythm, imagery, symbolism, energy of life in society." And that is why the arts is so important in our society. Singapore is a multicultural society, where the tapestry of our nation is so woven by the colourful threads of our unique diversity. And because of this, we have a special heritage to preserve, which in turn, spawns its own unique art forms in Singapore. It is not everywhere in the world that you can enjoy poetry in a range of different languages, all of which we can associate with, including dialects and Singlish, and have both traditional and contemporary forms of dance, music, theatre and visual arts.

I mentioned the late Santha Bhaskar earlier. She epitomises our multicultural spirit so well. Santha formed friendships with other dancers, who were also Cultural Medallion winners, like the ballet-trained Goh Lay Kuan, as well as the Malay dancer, Mdm Som Said. They learnt each other's dance styles, appreciated the beauty of each other's culture, which they then infused into the expression of their own craft. I think that is unique, that is special, that is Singapore.

This story reflects a distinctive feature of our arts and culture sector that we must continue to cherish, the shared multicultural diversity that Mr Sitoh Yih Pin spoke about. So, we will continue to support our arts practitioners.

Let me give Members an update and explain why I am confident of our arts and practitioners, as we seek to make the leap to the next level.

Sir, our arts and culture sector has come a long way over the last 10 years. It has become more vibrant and arts appreciation more widespread. The average number of arts and culture events per day has risen steadily, to more than 120 in 2022, almost double of what it was 10 years ago. More people are enjoying the arts. Arts in-person attendance in Singapore has grown to 59% in 2022, from 48% back in 2011. And if you include digital attendance – which is, post-COVID-19, now the rage, a very common way to access art these days – that figure goes up to 83%.

We have also developed top-class national institutions, like the Esplanade, National Gallery of Singapore, Singapore Art Museum, STPI Creative Workshop and Gallery, complemented by a rich array of private institutions, like the ArtScience Museum and The Private Museum, as well as private spaces, Artspace@Helutrans.

And we have a number of established arts companies today, reflecting the diversity of culture that I mentioned earlier. Companies like Nadi Singapura, Bhaskar's Arts Academy, Ding Yi Music Company, which offer a range of different art forms, genres, representing all of us, a diverse cross section of Singapore's ethnic and cultural make-up.

At the same time, our homegrown artists are rapidly establishing themselves on the world stage and bringing Singapore to the world. Multidisciplinary artist Robert Zhao will be showcasing his work titled "Seeing Forest" at the upcoming Venice Biennale 2024. This will happen in Venice next month. The Biennale is amongst the world's most prestigious platforms to showcase contemporary art. Our young singer-songwriter, Shazza, was featured at the iconic New York Times Square billboard just last year, as part of Spotify's EQUAL campaign, which spotlights women in music from around the world.

The Singapore Chinese Orchestra presented "Legends of Nanyang" in Shanghai, and later this year, they will be in Suzhou, Tianjin and Beijing. Singapore Ballet will also open the Gala event at Washington's Kennedy Center's "10,000 Dreams: A Celebration of Asian Choreography". And this will happen in June 2024 and they will present the late Cultural Medallion recipient Goh Choo San's choreography, "Momentum". The Singapore Symphony Orchestra has been invited to perform in Japan, and they will take part in the Kyoto Concert Hall in October 2024, an invitation by the Asia Orchestra Week.

Sir, these examples and many more, show that Singaporeans are already present at the top table at many of these events, and they include our own flagship festivals, such as the Singapore International Festival of Arts, Singapore Writers Festival and Singapore Art Week.

These festivals have drawn a strong international crowd and at the same time, they also allow Singaporeans to access the best in the world, as they come into Singapore and exhibit in Singapore.

Singapore Art Week, or SAW, for example, has grown annually to encompass more areas and districts in Singapore. Arts businesses, like art galleries and ceramic studios, have actively participated in SAW, to grow access to new audiences and new markets. In SAW this year, for example, we had 183 arts events across a 10-day festival, with the majority organised by these companies, enjoying also a very strong international presence.

Next, turning to a young creative. If you are a young creative today, there are many more pathways to pursue an arts education and make something out of it. The School of the Arts, or SOTA, our first specialised pre-tertiary arts school, was set up precisely to do this. The School of the Arts (SOTA) graduates go on to pursue careers in the arts or tap on their arts-enriched educational experience to embark on diverse careers.

At the tertiary level, those interested in the arts can also pursue diploma programmes. Take, for example, Republic Polytechnic's School of Technology for the Arts, or courses at the School of Art, Design and Media at the Nanyang Technological University, Yong Siew Toh Conservatory at the National University of Singapore for those inclined, or the degree programmes offered by Singapore's first arts university, the University of the Arts Singapore (UAS), that was established as an alliance between local arts institutions, LASALLE College of the Arts, as well as the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts. They will welcome their first intake in August this year.

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Both these arts institutions have an impressive faculty and alumni who have earned national recognition and also championed Singaporean creativity on the global stage. MCCY and the National Arts Council (NAC) have been working closely with the Ministry of Education (MOE) and UAS to ensure that there will continue to be good opportunities for arts graduates because it is one thing to have these courses and programmes, but it is another to ensure that when they graduate and they finish with their education, that there is a space for them in the creative economy.

And it is the creative economy which I now turn. These education pathways have built up a strong pipeline of talents which can flow into our creative economy where the range of job options have also expanded. I want to give Members one example: Guo Ningru. She is a sound engineer with more than a decade of experience designing sound for both local and regional productions. I met her when she won the Young Artist Award a couple of years ago in 2022. Ningru pursued a degree at the LASALLE College of the Arts, specialising in Sound Design. She received NAC's National Arts Scholarship and furthered her education at the renowned Sound Design programme at the University of California Irvine.

As a creative entrepreneur, Ningru creates 360-degree soundscapes, where audiences are immersed in an aural world. But what struck me about Ningru is a young creative, passionate about a very discrete area of the arts – sound engineering, how we deliver sound from the stage to the audiences. She developed a deep passion and interest in it and she is now highly schooled, well-educated in this area. She is now working in this area, freelancing, working with different companies, both local as well as regional, embarked on a career as a creative entrepreneur. And that is what we want to see.

Sir, we now have a vibrant and spontaneous group of freelancers as well supporting the arts economy. About one in three arts and heritage workers is a self-employed person, or SEP. Working in a wide range of roles, arts SEPs primarily take on gig work and generally do not have structured support from employers to support their training or career development. But they are very critical to the continued success and growth of the arts ecosystem. They play a vital role. They are a little messy sometimes, spontaneous but they add to the overall vibe and vibrancy.

So, NAC will do more to support the development of multiple pathways of training for these SEPs. They can also look forward to a wider range of development opportunities curated to fit their training needs and the nature of their work. Increasing support will help arts SEPs seize better work opportunities across a broader and wider range of job roles and, in turn, boost the long-term growth of the sector. Minister of State Low will speak a bit more about this.

Sir, in order to sustain this growth and push the envelope even more, we will need a concerted plan as well as collective buy-in from all Singaporeans. In 2018, we launched the first Our SG Arts Plan to drive the arts forward and provide a structured roadmap for the next five years, that is five years from 2018. But things changed quickly when COVID-19 intervened and we saw some shifts in the operating environment as well as trends, for example, audience preferences and new modalities of art presentation.

There was also greater intersection of sectors like design, fashion, film, architecture and music. They came together in ways which, perhaps, we did not see earlier. Some of these shifts have also become permanent ones. But in all of them, we saw opportunities.

So, rather than keep with the old plan and let it run its course, we took the opportunity to refresh the plan immediately, with Our SG Arts Plan last year, after substantial consultations with artists, stakeholders and so on in the sector for some time. Drawing an analogy from the arts, we changed the script during the intermission because we saw those shifts and we thought why not move down, move quickly, do not waste time and get the arts ecosystem powered and ready for the next bound.

Under this refreshed plan, we have bold ambitions to further enrich our creative economy, infuse the arts into our everyday lives and harness the power of the arts for their well-being. This programme will be further powered by an injection of $100 million to the arts sector over the next four years which the Government has committed to, to support the ambitions of this Arts Plan. This is in addition to the existing funding to the arts and heritage sector already provided by the Government.

Sir, the arts are essential to the social fabric of Singapore, as I mentioned earlier, and to the confidence and well-being of our people and also are a source of livelihood for many Singaporeans and we want to maintain, if not, push that even further. Minister of State Low will speak a bit more about this in her speech the details. But I want to close this section with an appeal.

Sir, we have seen how valuable our arts practitioners are in preserving our special identity and fostering cohesion and our multiculturalism. We have seen how our arts ecosystem has grown and evolved over the years. Our practitioners and arts companies have also matured, evolving with our society, challenging us with arts which tells our story, manifesting our fears and reflecting our dreams.

We have young creatives being given options to enter the creative workforce and, like Ningru, grabbed them with both hands and made a real fist of it. We also have many artists who are performing on the international stage, knocking on the door of world recognition. We have consciously nurtured arts patronage and support from donors who are playing their part to sustain the arts, supported by Government funding and programmes, such as the Cultural Matching Fund, which we extended a couple of years ago.

Sir, what we now need is a Singaporean audience to strongly support and come out strongly in support of the arts and appreciate our artists: attend the exhibitions, see them perform on stage, attend the festivals, go to their concerts and pay for them, just as we do for many foreign artists. This is what would really help our artists level up and scale even greater heights, a collective appreciation in support by the Singaporean audience. They need this collective support and, together, I believe we can harness its transformative power to then uplift our entire nation and build on the strengths of our diversity and multiculturalism to achieve social cohesion and a stronger sense of national identity.

Sir, let me conclude. We do not live or achieve our dreams alone, but together. This is true of our athletes and artists in the way which I have sketched out. And for all of us, we are our heroes as well, telling stories which inspire us. So, in the spirit of Forward SG, we want a society where no one is left behind; where those who succeed give back and invest in the dreams of others, pay it forward; where everyone brings more to the table and, as a result, we all get more in return, where we are all collectively stronger than the sum of our parts.

We are stepping up our efforts to promote civic engagement and giving back. We will also consciously provide more space for citizens to lead the change they want see in the areas that they care about and the Government will come in to support them. My colleague, Minister of State Alvin Tan, will share more on these efforts.

Mr Chairman, Sir, there is no one Singapore dream, no uniform pathway for success. What matters is that we live in a society that values our diverse passions and aspirations and that there are opportunities for us to achieve our fullest potential. And through ups and downs, we know that our fellow Singaporeans will be there to inspire us, lift us up when we need to, give us the boost we need to cross the finish line.

Sir, on that note, I want to thank the various speeches and cuts that had been made from both sides of the House. All Members, as well as our Government Parliamentary Committee (GPC) Members, made many good suggestions, many constructive comments. I also want to thank, in particular, my team from MCCY and our agencies who work very hard to ensure that the policies that we devise meet the needs of Singaporeans and come closer and closer to the endpoints that I mentioned earlier – for cohesion, identity and a transformative strength that is Singapore.

That is why we will continue to work hard to build a vibrant and cohesive home. My Ministry is committed to that – a Singapore where Singaporeans continue to dream and have the courage and ability to chase down those dreams. If we can do this together, Sir, I am confident that Singapore's best days are well ahead of us. [Applause.]

The Chairman: Minister of State Low Yen Ling.

The Minister of State for Culture, Community and Youth (Ms Low Yen Ling): Chairman, the arts and heritage serve as powerful ways to connect Singaporeans of different backgrounds. The Government works closely with our arts and heritage practitioners, stakeholders and the public to create and foster a vibrant arts and heritage ecosystem. In my speech today, I will share how we aim to bring Singapore's arts and heritage to the next bound of growth.

First, we will open up more diverse touchpoints to widen Singaporeans' access to arts and heritage. Second, we will support the development of our practitioners and boost their artistic excellence. Third, we will build a more robust arts and heritage ecosystem to bring the sector to greater heights.

In recent years, we saw sustained and holistic efforts to expand access to the arts, develop a wider audience and enrich our heritage. I think everyone remembers the pandemic years. During the pandemic period from 2019 to 2021, some $490 million was spent each year to boost and uphold the arts and heritage sector.

NAC provided grants and arts housing subsidies to support the creation and production of artistic works, foster organisational growth and cultivate audience engagement. For instance, earlier on, Minister Edwin Tong talked about the Singapore Art Week or SAW. I think it bears repeating. SAW reached over 1.4 million attendees in 130 events last year. And this year, SAW 2024 featured 183 events. Partners from different sectors, like Marina Bay Sands, HDB and Singapore Airlines, worked with us to bring Singapore art to wider audiences.

To promote and preserve our heritage, we opened the revamped Peranakan Museum last year. And in addition, we joined Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand to jointly nominate the kebaya to be on the UNESCO Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage.

Last year, we unveiled Our SG Arts and Heritage plans for 2023 to 2027, like what Minister Edwin Tong mentioned, envisioning an inclusive, accessible and vibrant arts and heritage sector for Singapore. We aim to create a connected society, foster a creative economy and establish Singapore as a distinctive city.

At the same time, our SG Heritage Plan 2.0 seeks to empower the community to safeguard and promote our shared heritage and encourage active participation in shaping our heritage landscape. We will build the growth of our heritage sector upon the foundational blocks of identity, industry, innovation and community.

The Government is committed to the success of these plans. Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong announced in the 2024 Budget that an additional $100 million would be allocated over the four years of Our SG Arts Plan 2023 to 2027.

Ms Usha Chandradas would be glad to know that this $100 million provided is on top of the annual budget for arts and heritage and will go towards: one, expanding arts access for Singaporeans; two, developing our artists and arts workers in Singapore; and three, building a robust arts ecosystem where arts companies and artists thrive.

In addition, we will look at making more significant investments in bringing the arts to the community, catalysing new spaces in our city and leveraging the arts for social impact. We will further support arts groups to achieve excellence, for instance, by catalysing innovation, expanding into new audience segments and building common new capabilities through technology. Let me elaborate.

NAC will expand access to the arts for Singaporeans so that all can participate and benefit. We want to extend the reach and the significance of the arts sector to Singaporeans across diverse walks of life and socioeconomic backgrounds. Besides widening access, we will unpack the power of the arts to promote the health and wellness of Singaporeans.

Yesterday evening, Ms Joan Pereira and Mr Mohd Fahmi have shared, super-ageing Singapore can certainly gain from arts programmes that seek to enhance the quality of life and personal wellness. We, in MCCY and NAC, agree with both Ms Joan Pereira and Mr Mohd Fahmi. We have had good feedback from such programmes and will continue to do more in this area. For example, participants in the series of mindful "Slow Art" programmes by the National Gallery Singapore reported lower stress levels and enhanced well-being, compared to non-attendees.

So, I am glad to announce that NAC will collaborate with the Agency for Integrated Care (AIC) and SingHealth to develop a framework and resources to guide the design of programmes that promote the arts for health and wellness. The framework, to be developed by 2027, will include best practices, impact measurement tools and case studies that can be used by artists and our community partners. It will initially focus on the well-being of our seniors, with plans to subsequently expand its scope to reach wider groups of people.

The framework and the resources will open up more opportunities for our arts practitioners to use their craft to support and promote well-being. This move is also aligned with our aim to increase access to the arts for citizens through health and community touchpoints, further supporting the Government’s HealthierSG objectives.

The National Heritage Board (NHB) will continue partnering with social service agencies on heritage-based interventions targeted at improving well-being, especially that of our seniors. This is part of the focus on community under Our SG Heritage Plan 2.0.

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To give Members a quick example, I think some of you may have visited the National Museum. The National Museum of Singapore recently created an inclusive social space that is called Reunion, for our seniors, including those with mild cognitive impairment and dementia, to engage in meaningful activities and conversations inspired by the museum’s collection.

Chairman, besides engaging our seniors through the arts, we are also actively engaging our youth in the plans for promoting and safeguarding Singapore’s heritage. I agree with Mr Keith Chua and Mr Sitoh Yih Pin on the importance of strengthening our youths' understanding and appreciation of our shared legacy.

To this end, the NHB has involved 35 young people on its panel to develop the inaugural Youth Heritage Blueprint. This gives our youth a platform to share their views and a chance to shape our museums and heritage landscape. Sir, 26-year-old Ms Nur Ashikin Binte Muhamad Ali, a project manager and also a committee lead of the Youth Panel, is excited to see how digital tools like augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) can make Singapore heritage come alive for younger people.

Since January 2023, the Youth Panel has received feedback and suggestions from more than 1,000 youths. The Panel is analysing the findings and developing recommendations for the Blueprint, which will be published in July this year.

Through these initiatives, we hope to make the arts and heritage accessible for all Singaporeans across different age groups, ensuring meaningful engagement with our cultural heritage.

Chairman, as part of our aim to widen access to the arts, NAC will further expand the diversity of arts spaces in Singapore. This is in line with our goal to make Singapore a distinctive city.

Mr Darryl David would be glad to know that NAC will continue to collaborate with public and private sector partners to unlock arts spaces for our artists and also our arts organisations, while also enlivening our public spaces with the arts.

For example, NAC works with the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) on the Community and Sports Facilities Scheme, which co-locates community, arts and sports spaces with commercial developments. Recently, The Artground, which is an inclusive family-oriented arts space for children opened at the One Holland Village mall. This not only offers Singaporean families' easy access to quality arts experiences but also enhances the vibrancy of commercial spaces.

To create more touchpoints for the arts, NAC will continue to collaborate with public sector and private sector partners to unlock and develop arts spaces across Singapore, including the use of both new and also refurbished spaces.

Take 45 Armenian Street for example. NAC has been working with the arts community and stakeholders to co-create the vision for the redevelopment of this space. It is being developed as a hub for artistic experimentation and to support the work of young and emerging practitioners. We thank Ms Usha Chandradas for her feedback when she delivered her cut last evening. When completed in two years' time in year 2026, 45 Armenian Street will provide about 14,000 square feet space for the arts.

Chairman, besides having greater access to the arts in a variety of spaces, Singaporeans are also gaining a deeper appreciation of our heritage assets at different spots across the island.

Mr Mark Lee, Mr Darryl David and Mr Sitoh Yih Pin asked about our plans to foster community bonding, national pride and enliven neighbourhoods through our heritage assets.

As part of Our SG Heritage Plan 2.0, NHB will launch Heritage Activation Nodes, or HANs, in various neighbourhoods island-wide. Together with community partners and heritage interest groups, we will co-create heritage activities and celebrate the unique heritage of our neighbourhoods in each HAN. The first of these nodes will be introduced in Katong – Joo Chiat just next month, April 2024; while the second HAN in Clementi will be rolled out in the later part of this year. I was hoping that Dr Tan Wu Meng will be in the House when I say that about the second HAN in Clementi.

Behind the development of the Katong-Joo Chiat HAN is Katong Culture, a heritage interest group from Joo Chiat Community Club Management Committee and their community partners. Through these nodes, we hope to encourage greater appreciation of our heritage assets among Singaporeans. The HANs will offer fresh heritage touchpoints and provide the platform and opportunities for Singaporeans to co-create heritage experiences.

Chairman, I will now touch on how we will create a vibrant arts and heritage ecosystem with a strong core of arts and heritage businesses and practitioners.

As I mentioned earlier, NAC will be investing an additional $100 million over the next four years. Under the Creative Economy Thrust of our SG Arts Plan 2023 to 2027, the funding will be used to grow our arts ecosystem and help our local arts companies scale impact and speed up their transformation.

First, product development. We will further support our artists and arts companies to develop distinctive and diverse arts offerings for both local and international audiences.

Second, innovation and capability building. NAC will support transformations in art making and artistic productions that leverage on technology to catalyse innovative arts products.

Third, audience development. NAC will help our arts companies to expand their reach or cultivate new audience segments through engaging and innovative works or presentations.

Let me quickly elaborate on how we will broaden and grow our audience through partnerships, technology, data and also insights. NAC will partner with individuals, including independent content creators and writers, as well as organisations, on joint projects and initiatives to expand the overall audience base. We will use technology as an instrument to achieve our goals. It is an important learning point from COVID-19 that we intend to continue to harness.

For example, NAC’s Catch, which is a one-stop online destination for all things arts and culture in Singapore will help our artists and arts organisations to: one, promote their work; two, reach a wider audience; and three, to build relationships with potential supporters. In addition, technology can empower us to better understand consumers’ preferences and tastes through data collection as well as analytics. So, with this knowledge, we will be then more equipped to grow the arts and culture scene strategically.

To create a vibrant arts and heritage ecosystem, we need a strong core of practitioners with talent, capabilities and skills. Many of our arts practitioners are self-employed persons, or SEPs. As Minister Edwin Tong announced earlier, NAC will strengthen the support for our Arts SEPs to boost their prospects and their chances of success. We will enhance and increase their training opportunities to enable them to pursue their profession with better career stability.

NAC will develop multiple pathways of training and support for Arts SEPs. This can be in the form of workplace-based, peer-to-peer and also self-directed learning. The Arts Resource Hub will also be enriched with career guidance resources and content tailored for Arts SEPs. For instance, NAC worked with Jeremiah Choy, an SEP and creative director, producer and curator to produce a series of videos with tips and best practices on how to set up a business in the arts and be a successful freelancer.

In addition, NAC will widen the funding access for Arts SEPs to receive training opportunities. These training support enhancements will certainly benefit SEPs, including the arts instructors, as Ms Jean See had pointed out during the delivery of her cut last evening. I would also like to assure Ms Jean See that NAC works with the National Instructors and Coaches Association (NICA) through the NAC-NICA Training Support programme, providing our SEPs with training subsidies and training allowances to support their upskilling journey. NAC also provides affordable physical spaces for arts SEPs and arts instructors’ use via the Arts Resource Hub (ARH).

To maintain a vibrant arts and heritage ecosystem, we will continue to honour and celebrate the peaks of artistic excellence in our midst. The Cultural Medallion (CM), as the nation’s highest arts accolade, provides funds to support its recipients’ continuous artistic pursuits and contributions to the Singapore art scene. We would like to assure Ms Usha Chadradas that NAC has, over the years, broadened the range of projects that the CM Fund can support. I also want to assure her that the process for the recipients to utilise the Fund has also been simplified. Chairman, please allow me to speak in Mandarin.

(In Mandarin): [Please refer to Vernacular Speech.] Chairman, the arts and culture reflect our daily lives, connecting Singaporeans from different social backgrounds and fostering a sense of unity and identity. It is an important part of our social and national development.

Last year, MCCY launched Our SG Arts and Heritage Plans 2.0. Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong announced in this year's Budget Statement that the Government will allocate $100 million for Our SG Arts Plan from 2023 to 2027. This funding will support three key thrusts: first, building a Connected Society; second, developing Singapore's Creative Economy; and third, establishing Singapore as a Distinctive City. This funding will help us to expand the scope of arts, increase opportunities for Singaporeans to engage with arts, nurture more artists, and establish a more comprehensive arts ecosystem.

MCCY has always been committed to bringing arts and culture to more Singaporeans so that more can participate in and benefit from the activities. This year, we can look forward to even more vibrant and robust arts and heritage offerings. For example, NHB will roll out two new Heritage Activation Nodes consecutively this year – one in Katong-Joo Chiat and the other in Clementi. These two Heritage Activation Nodes will unlock more heritage touchpoints for Singaporeans, promoting greater understanding and appreciation of the unique heritage of their neighbourhoods, and allow all to jointly experience and create unforgettable memories together.

Arts and culture not only bring communities together, it can also cultivate our character, allowing us to experience the beauty of life and bringing us positive energy. Therefore, this year, NAC will collaborate with healthcare partners to promote arts and cultural activities with the aim of improving the well-being of Singaporeans. NAC and healthcare partners will work together to integrate frameworks and resources to guide artists and community partners in the design of arts and cultural programmes that can help to uplift spirits, cultivate Singaporeans’ interest and passion in arts, enrich our lives and making them more meaningful. This programme will be developed first through pilots with seniors and expanded thereafter for more communities to benefit from arts for well-being programmes.

Chairman, MCCY is committed to working with our artists and partners from various fields to build a vibrant and dynamic arts and heritage sector for Singaporeans, as well as a harmonious, inclusive, creative, cohesive and uniquely charming Singapore.

(In English): Chairman, our arts and heritage belong to all Singaporeans. As Minister Edwin Tong mentioned, everyone can support and everyone contribute to the vibrancy of our arts and heritage ecosystem. So, MCCY, NAC, NHB, we invite all our stakeholders to co-create a dynamic and flourishing Singapore arts and heritage scene together.

MCCY, NAC, NHB, we are committed to working closely with our partners in the private sector, public sector and people sectors to deepen our shared identity and grow a distinctive city that is anchored on our shared arts and culture, because our artists and our practitioners form the powerhouse for Singapore’s creative economy. With our arts and heritage plans in place, we have the chance to turn our aspirations into reality – to become a creative city that inspires.

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The Chairman: Minister of State Alvin Tan.

The Minister of State for Culture, Community and Youth (Mr Alvin Tan): Chairman, our Forward SG exercise brought together over 200,000 Singaporeans to share their hopes and dreams for Singapore and how they can contribute towards our refreshed social compact.

Our community and corporates have answered this call. Today, I will share how MCCY is creating more spaces, more platforms and more tools for them to give back and shape a better Singapore – a city and nation that inspires, as Minister of State Low Yen Ling just said in her speech.

First, our community. Our community's response to the call to shape a better Singapore starts early on – with our youths. As Deputy Chair of the National Youth Council (NYC), I get to spend a lot of time with our youths. They are hungry; they are inquisitive; and they have diverse dreams and passions, ideas and ideals. Dr Syed Harun and I know this in our work with our youths at NYC, and I thank him for serving alongside me as an NYC council member.

Dr Harun and I know that our youths have an unwavering can-do attitude and spirit and want to take action. They care deeply about giving back and making a positive impact on the causes they believe in. That is why we have been listening to them – listening to what they want and providing them with the space, support and the platforms to lead this change.

Ms Hany Soh asked how we are supporting our youths to experiment and execute their ideas. She specifically mentioned the Youth Action Challenge, or YAC. Over the past five seasons of YAC, we have awarded funding to more than 1,000 youths and over 280 youth projects that tackle issues like sustainability, social isolation and mental well-being. These projects have created positive outcomes in our community.

Recently, I spent an evening with Grace, Jun Han and Valencia from Friendzone, a social enterprise that organises events to connect people and to build new friendships. Since receiving funding in YAC Season 2, Friendzone has scaled their outreach, connecting more than 4,000 participants over 200 gatherings. So, if you are a young person with exciting ideas, please watch out for YAC Season 6, coming up.

Sir, our youths also want a greater say in policymaking in areas they care deeply about. That is why we set up the four inaugural Youth Panels, to partner them to shape national policies. Dr Harun asked how we are harnessing our youths' creativity to shape our future and if we are tapping a wider pool of youths. I am happy to share with him that around 140 youths from diverse backgrounds are, indeed, on our Youth Panels. And they comprise a good mix of young working adults and schooling youths, each with their unique lived experiences and perspectives.

I recently caught up with Damien and Salwa from the Institute of Technical College (ITE) College West and Kaplan Higher Education Institute respectively. Despite their busy studies, they spent time at these meetings, and they found them very meaningful and also very valuable. They got to exchange perspectives with other members from different backgrounds and deliberate on complex issues to shape their policy recommendations. They are only 17 years old, and their level of maturity and insightfulness, and indeed, their questions, were really inspiring.

Sir, our Youth Panels mark a shift in how our Government is creating more space for our youths to take ownership in nation-building. Our youths have a direct role in deciding the issues that the Youth Panels would address. These panels also receive support from Government agencies throughout their term, including access to agencies' policy considerations, expertise and data, to inform their policy deliberations.

We will ensure that the views of our youths are incorporated into the policy panels' recommendations, and then either table these recommendations in Parliament for debate, implement them or address them via other channels, such as written responses. So, I look forward to seeing our Youth Panels' recommendations.

If you are keen to share your perspectives, please join us at our inaugural Youth Policy Forum later this year. Our panels will present their policy ideas and debate them before finalising their recommendations.

Sir, another segment of the community that has answered this call, in addition to our youths, are our volunteers at the SG Cares Volunteer Centres. These are individuals giving back and offering peer support in neighbourhoods they grew up in or areas that are close to their heart.

An area that is close to my heart is Jalan Kukoh, where I started my volunteering journey as a youth 20 years ago, serving children, youths, seniors and vulnerable families there. Jalan Kukoh is now home to one of 24 SG Cares Volunteer Centres (VCs) across Singapore, making an impact in their respective communities.

Since 2018, close to 100,000 volunteers have served with these 24 VCs, reaching over 600,000 beneficiaries. I recently met Mrs Chan Swee Fen, a volunteer with SG Cares VC @ Kreta Ayer, which covers Jalan Kukoh. Swee Fen has a Master's degree in counselling and trains volunteer befrienders in practical counselling skills, giving them confidence to conduct home visits and befriend vulnerable seniors in Jalan Kukoh and also the Chin Swee area. She is one of 20,000 volunteers who regularly serve with VCs and is a forerunner of what we call skills-based volunteerism where individuals volunteer their professional skills to meet specific community needs.

And more professional bodies are adopting this model of volunteering. For example, MCCY is partnering Pro Bono SG to grow and develop their pool of volunteer lawyers who provide legal advice to non-profit organisations. Forty volunteer lawyers have served over 800 clients at the Community Law Centre at Tian De Temple in 2023 alone. Last December, I met Ms Cai Chengying and her Pro Bono SG team, and they told me that they will be expanding their reach beyond Tian De Temple. True to their word, Pro Bono SG launched their second Community Law Centre in the Northwest District earlier this year. But this is just the start.

Mr Baey Yam Keng asked about sustaining our VCs' impact and how they are strengthening volunteer management. Ms Rahayu Mahzam asked about reaching senior volunteers. Our VCs equip community partners with skills to attract, engage and retain volunteers of all ages – the young and the young-at-heart. For example, SG Cares VCs @ Geylang and Serangoon train MOE educators to design more meaningful values-in-action (VIA) programmes and projects, encouraging students to continue volunteering even after completing their VIA requirements. Our VCs also work with community partners like RSVP Singapore and Active Ageing Centres to avail more volunteering opportunities that meet the interests of seniors, such as mentoring, befriending and supporting non-profit organisations. MCCY also works with the National Council of Social Services and the Singapore University of Social Sciences to equip our VCs to better do their outreach, training, volunteer management and enable them to learn from one another's best practices.

Mr Baey asked how we manage when SG Cares VCs change operators to keep up with the town's shifting needs. Over the past five years, only three towns have changed operators and, in every case, we ensure a smooth transition. Disruptions are limited and our volunteers have continued to serve on the ground consistently.

So, those keen to volunteer with our SG Cares Volunteer Centres, please visit our SG Cares website to find your nearest VC and to learn about volunteering opportunities that match your interest and your specific skillsets.

Sir, from youths to volunteers at our SG Cares Volunteer Centres to our racial and religious groups, our communities in Singapore are giving back. And there is no more important cause to contribute to than our precious racial and religious harmony, a point that Mr Sitoh Yi Pin, Mr Darryl David and Mr Raj Joshua Thomas made yesterday. As what Minister Edwin Tong said, it is something we must cherish and protect.

I agree with them that we must press on with these efforts, and I am glad to say we are far from starting from scratch. Our community and religious leaders have worked hard over the years to achieve this. Leaders from key ethnic and religious groups contribute to our National Steering Committee on Racial and Religious Harmony. This Committee has helped foster closer ties among these leaders who, in turn, bring their communities together. Committee Members even take turns to organise the annual Harmony Games. Just last Saturday, the Catholic Archdiocese were the lead organisers and they will hand over to the Taoist Federation to organise next year's games.

On the ground in our communities, our Racial and Religious Harmony Circles (HCs) have seen an increase in membership and activities since we refreshed them last year. I have joined a few of these such activities, including last year's Harmony Sports Fiesta at our Sports Hub that reached more than 31,000 people, thanks to the support of over 1,000 HC members, and also Marymount HC's Ultimate Frisbee Tournament with over 200 youths and the young-at-heart. Beneath the roaring energy on the field, I witnessed a shared sense of mutual trust and understanding among participants from different religious organisations and community groups at Marymount. So, well done, Marymount HC.

But our work is only just getting started and we have much more to do. By 2025, we will equip 800 key HC leaders with skills, such as mediation and crisis preparedness, to bolster social harmony in peacetime and in times of crises. And our Harmony Circle Coordinating Council will continue to strengthen efforts to make our HCs more diverse and more digital. So, if you are passionate about preserving and strengthening our precious racial and religious harmony, please join your nearest HC.

Sir, beyond our youths, volunteers in VCs and racial and religious groups, we see another group taking on a new challenge confronting us – our society's mental health and mental well-being, which Deputy Prime Minister Wong has affirmed as a national priority.

This group comprises our SG Mental Well-being Network, which Ms Hany Soh mentioned. We set up this Network in 2022 so that individuals, community stakeholders and private partners can work together to build mental resilience in our communities.

Ms Hany Soh asked about the work done by the network thus far. It has made good progress. We now have 12 well-being circles at various locales. They have trained over 600 individuals in peer support skills and reached more than 3,000 people through their programmes. The three newest well-being circles are located in Queenstown, Marymount and the Singapore Management University. And we welcome the Woodgrove Well-being Circle as well.

And we have made progress beyond these community or locale well-being circles. Our network's members, such as Growth Collective SG and Happiness Initiative, have introduced their own peer support programmes, running more than 900 peer support circles across workplaces, educational and healthcare institutions. Studies done with selected partners found that these peer support circles helped improve mental well-being and sustain it over time.

We will launch a guide later this year on how to set up a Well-Being Circle. So, if you want to set up one, please connect with our network or join our Partners Networking Night on 25 March at 7.00 pm at the Lifelong Learning Institute.

Sir, I have shared how our community, including our youths, VCs, racial and religious groups and mental health advocates, are answering the call and giving back. Alongside our burgeoning community are corporates which have also answered the call.

I recently caught up with Razif Yusoff, who is the co-founder of Push Pull Give, a fitness social enterprise. Push Pull Give allows non-profit organisations to use their fitness studios for free and offers scholarships and employment opportunities for young adults from disadvantaged backgrounds. Push Pull Give is one of the 55 companies that have committed to the National Volunteer and Philanthropic Centre's Company of Good Programme, pledging positive social impact as the core of their business.

Corporates which actively give back to society rarely do so alone. In fact, mutual support and opportunities to network with like-minded businesses are hallmarks of NVPC's Company of Good Programme.

A couple of weeks ago, I visited Unilever's campus to meet 16 local small and medium enterprises (SMEs) which signed up for the Unilever-NVPC Purpose for Growth programme. Unilever mentors helped these SMEs define their business strategy and how to make a positive impact in Singapore.

I am sure many more companies will do the same. I invite them to come because all companies, big and small, can play a part, work together and amplify your social impact on the ground.

I would also like to thank Mr Neil Parekh and the Singapore Business Federation (SBF) for working with us to set up the Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) Coordination Office in SBF. I look forward to working with him and his team through quarterly industry engagements to reach SBF's 28,000 members and encourage more corporates to follow in the footsteps of Companies of Good.

Mr Mohd Fahmi asked how we can support our Co-operatives, which are already contributing to society. I meet with our Cooperatives and Singapore National Co-operative Federation (SNCF) leaders regularly. We are working closely with SNCF to groom emerging leaders and provide targeted funding to ensure our co-operatives remain relevant and also well-governed.

Sir, corporates are also giving back through mentoring by helping our youths navigate key transitions, such as educational and career pathways.

Ms Rahayu Mahzam asked about the progress of Mentoring SG. I would like to thank her for her own efforts in building our National Mentoring movement. She mentioned School of Day 1, by Matin Mohdari, which is part of Mentoring SG. School of Day 1 recently ran a session for youths who just received their "A" level results. I am in contact with Matin and have promised him that we will do more together under the Mentoring SG banner.

Sir, since we launched Mentoring SG in December 2022, it has expanded its outreach, engaging 100 corporates, 2,000 skilled mentors and more than 5,000 youths. And we are training more mentors. Last month, Mentoring SG rolled out a Singapore Workforce Skills Qualifications (WSQ) accredited course called Mentoring for Youth, which equips mentors with effective facilitation and communication skills through scenario-based practices.

Mentoring SG is embarking on a research study to measure the impact of mentoring programmes and partnerships. The findings will enable it to scale up quality programmes.

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This year, Mentoring SG will partner more corporates on industry-led mentoring initiatives. It will also partner more polytechnics and ITEs, to provide more avenues for corporates to give back. For example, the Singapore Semiconductor Industry Association (SSIA) partnered Mentoring SG at the recent Electronics Industry Day in ITE College Central, which I attended, and where employees from semiconductor giant Micron Electronics conducted a “flash mentoring” programme for ITE students. The students I spoke to at the event benefited greatly from the experience, they left with a newfound interest in careers within the semiconductor and precision engineering sectors. Corporates and individuals keen to support our national mentoring movement, please sign up at mentoring.sg.

Sir, I shared how our community and corporates are answering the call to give back using the platforms and tools we have provided. Therefore, Mr Keith Chua’s question about how we plan to grow philanthropy and foster collaboration is timely.

Deputy Prime Minister Wong shared in his Budget speech about an initiative that will help donors better appreciate the needs of our society and also direct their resources to these needs. Today, I am glad to announce the launch of this initiative, called The Collective for a Stronger Society, or The Collective, for short.

Put together by the Community Foundation of Singapore (CFS), in partnership with MSF and the Community Chest, and supported by MCCY, The Collective will connect donors with causes, where donors can navigate causes on the ground that uplift lower-income families; direct their resources to non-profits, social enterprises and other partners that lead impactful initiatives; and identify gaps in the landscape; and come up with fresh solutions that address unmet needs in society. I discussed these details about The Collective with the CFS team at their 15th Anniversary Lunch three weeks ago. CFS will release further details later this year and I encourage companies to find out more and we are looking forward to partner as many companies as possible.

The Collective is one platform for our community and our corporates to give back. The other platform is our Singapore Government Partnerships Office (SGPO), which we launched in January, to partner citizens and stakeholders who are keen to work with the Government to turn their ideas into reality.

We agree with Mr Baey and recognise that some of these ideas do not necessarily fall neatly along agency lines. Therefore, SGPO acts as a "first-stop" for citizens or stakeholders with such ideas and it helps to connect them to the right agencies or partners to put their ideas into action. So, please connect with us on our SGPO website with your ideas and your plans for action!

Mr Chairman, our community and our corporates have answered the Forward SG call for a new, refreshed social compact. And we are only just getting started. You have heard me share about the different platforms and the different spaces and the different tools we have made available for our community and our corporates, so I invite all of you to join us to take that step alongside us to shape the Singapore we all want to see, together.

Senior Parliamentary Secretary Eric Chua will quicken our steps in his speech about sports next, so I shall hand the baton smoothly for him as he brings us to the home stretch.

The Chairman: Senior Parliamentary Secretary Eric Chua. For the home stretch.

The Senior Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Culture, Community and Youth (Mr Eric Chua): Chair, sports is a great way for people from all walks of life, whether you are a senior, a youth, a person with disabilities, sport enthusiast, or weekend warrior, to bond and to stay healthy together.

Singaporeans lead busy lives but we want to make it easier for everyone to make sports a way of life. Our ambition is for Singaporeans to be able to take a 10-minute walk from home to affordable sport facilities by around 2030. This is made possible through the Sport Facilities Master Plan (SFMP).

Today, SportSG has built 10 Sport-in-Precinct (SIP) facilities with another 24 more projects in various development stages. These facilities are located conveniently within HDB estates and are free for use by all.

Dr Syed Harun highlighted the importance of sport in strengthening community ties and social cohesion. SIP facilities serve as organic nodes that brings the community together. From playgrounds for children, to sheltered courts for futsal or basketball, exercise stations with QR codes which you can scan to learn correct techniques and rubberised walking tracks for seniors. There is something for everyone.

More than 370 facilities including indoor sports halls and free-to-play fields are also available under the Dual Use Scheme (DUS). In fact, there are over 40 free-to-play fields where Singaporeans can freely use on weekends.

This year, we look forward to the opening of four new facilities namely: the Kallang Tennis Hub, the Kallang Football Hub, new basketball courts at the former Bedok Swimming Complex and a facility for softball and baseball at Jurong East. In the coming years, Punggol and Clementi residents can also look forward to new sports facilities. At Clementi, there will be a new town playfield which includes a running track and community sport courts. A 5,000-seater stadium, swimming complex, 20-badminton-court-sized indoor sports hall, sheltered tennis and futsal courts, water sports centre and an archery field are features of the new Punggol Regional Sport Centre.

And we have been making our sporting facilities inclusive and accessible to Singaporeans of all abilities. Mr Ong Hua Han emphasised that it is not enough to just make our sports facilities inclusive. We must help persons with disabilities feel empowered to exercise in mainstream settings.

I fully agree. Since the launch of the Disability Sport Master Plan (DSMP) in 2016, SportSG has introduced a range of programmes so more persons with disabilities can take part in sports. These include the learn-to-play programmes such as “Yes! I Can” and “Play-Ability”, as mentioned by Minister Edwin earlier, and an annual Play Inclusive campaign. To date, some 20,000 persons with disabilities have taken part in these programmes.

Our vision is for all persons with disabilities to be engaged, enriched, and empowered through sports.

To refresh the DSMP, we have convened a taskforce comprising stakeholders from SportSG, MSF, SG Enable, MOE and disability sports organisations such as the Singapore Disability Sports Council (SDSC) and Special Olympics Singapore (SOSG).

To date, the task force has engaged more than 600 stakeholders, received good inputs. In essence, the DSMP refresh will look to: one, increase accessibility to disability sport activities and facilities; two, enhance awareness of disability and inclusive sporting opportunities; and three, help fulfil the aspirations of those who aspire to pursue sports at the high performance level. We will share more in detail later this year.

Sport is not only a great way to keep fit, but also builds character, transforms lives and encourage social mixing. In particular, the SportCares programme seeks to harness the power of sport to provide access and opportunities for marginalised communities. Through SportCares initiatives and bursaries, children and youths from low-income families have increased access to quality sports programmes, such as athletics, basketball, water polo and canoeing and many others.

To date, the SportCares bursaries have enabled more than 480 children and youths to learn new sports. In April 2023, SportCares also awarded scholarships to its first batch of students. I would like to share how the scholarship has helped Hassan Shapiee.

Hassan joined SportCares’ Saturday Night Lights (SNL) programme in 2017. SNL is a football programme for youths aged 13 to 21, to train regularly and to compete in the HEARTS Football league throughout the year. Coming from a low-income family with his father as the sole breadwinner, Hassan is the third of five children and juggles part-time jobs to alleviate the financial strain at home. Other than studying, Hassan is also caregiver to his five-year-old younger brother. During his time with SportCares, Hassan served as a responsible captain of his SNL team. As an alumnus, Hassan continues to give back by volunteering with SportCares, planning camps for students with special needs and children from low-income families. He also participates actively in the SportCares Champions programme – a leadership programme for youths willing and able to step into the role of a leader and mentor. With the help of the scholarship, Hassan will complete his Diploma in Sustainable Built Environment at Republic Polytechnic and he has plans to join the Police force.

In his Budget speech last month, Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong announced that the Government will match dollar-for-dollar, all donations to SportCares from April this year onwards. We really hope more Singaporeans and corporates will step forward to donate generously to SportCares.

Chair, we know how passionate Singaporeans are when it comes to football, and how much we hope to see our national team succeed both at the regional as well as international levels. Mr Darryl David and Mr Faisal Manap asked for an update on Unleash the Roar and the selection process for Singapore’s National Team's Head Coach.

The Football Association of Singapore (FAS) is responsible for the promotion and development of the sport. This includes developing training programmes and the hiring of coaches. When selecting a National Head coach, FAS considers the following key attributes; one, the candidate needs to demonstrate a track record of developing players and have a robust strategy in preparing and fielding a team to achieve results; two, apart from the National “A” team, the candidate would also supervise the Under-22 team together with the Under-22 Head Coach; three, the candidate is expected to uplift the football ecosystem, impart knowledge and raise the overall profile of football.

FAS has gone through a rigorous process to find a new coach. Let us give our new national coach some time to find his footing and hopefully make his mark with the national team.

To be sure, we are playing the long game to uplift Singapore football. We launched the Unleash the Roar! (UTR!) in March 2021, and since then we have made steady progress to strengthen our football ecosystem locally. A critical part of this is developing a structured football development system so that we can raise the standards of Singapore football at all levels.

I would like to share, at this juncture, a few updates. We now have 15 School Football Academies (SFAs), of which five have dedicated programmes for girls. We have also doubled the number of young footballers from 300 youths in 10 pilot SFAs in 2022 when we started, to over 830 male and female young footballers this year. We have also set up and since sent our National Development Centre (NDC) teams and a combined SFA squad overseas for training camps and competition opportunities to expose them to quality competition they cannot find locally and to further their development in football.

Just last month, we launched the Singapore Youth League (SYL): our inaugural nationwide high performance youth football competition. The SYL provides aspiring youth players a regular and competitive platform to gain match experience and develop their football skills. Through this league, we hope to further strengthen a robust talent pipeline of next-generation national team players.

Last year, we also sent our first batch of eight young footballers on UTR! Scholarships to study and train overseas at world-renowned academies – the IMG Academy in Florida, USA and the ESC LaLiga in Madrid, Spain.

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Chloe Koh, one of our scholarship recipients, is now at the IMG Academy in the US. Her near-term goal is to play in the NCAA Division I and, ultimately, she wants to play professionally. As an introvert, Chloe had to step out of her comfort zone when she first arrived in the US. After a few months, however, she has quickly adapted.

At IMG, Chloe gets to travel to different states in the United States, play in tournaments and showcase her skills to college scouts, who are proactively seeking out young talents and potentially bringing them a step closer to their dream of turning professional. We wish Chloe and all our UTR scholars currently overseas all the best.

Chair, our Team Singapore athletes continue to inspire Singaporeans as they shine on the world stage. And this is only possible with a strong support system backing them in taking their sporting goals to the next level. Our high-performance sport (HPS) system is dynamic and athlete-centric. Each athlete is supported in a holistic and personalised manner.

The Singapore Sport and Exercise Medicine Centre (SSMC@SSI) provides personalised sport medicine care for our athletes. Such support includes comprehensive medical screening, focusing on both physical as well as mental health; support for athlete recovery through physiotherapy and exercise rehabilitation; and integration of medical care with sports sciences.

Athletes are covered by a medical insurance policy that allows athletes to claim for in-patient treatment or surgery for accidental sports-related injuries not covered by SSI or SSMC@SSI. To Ms Sylvia Lim's suggestion regarding former national athletes, our consistent approach is to support our athletes' transition into retirement from the competitive sporting careers by helping them find good employment. Active and retired athletes can also tap on various programmes, including spexEducation and spexBusiness, as elaborated by the Minister in his speech earlier. But we will explore how we can support them better.

On the funding of NSAs, there is no change to the policy and requirements that NSAs must meet to qualify for our funding. Besides the mandatory annual submission of audited statement of accounts to SportSG, NSAs are also required to allow SportSG to audit their accounting records.

If an NSA is found non-compliant with the terms of its funding agreement, SportSG will take appropriate action, such as suspending, terminating or even recovering the grant. For more serious cases, such as misappropriation of funds, SportSG would refer these to the police.

We have also previously explained, how we allocate our funding across the NSAs. That has not changed. SportSG's annual grants to NSAs help to support their organisation functions, outreach programmes, training facilities and HPS plans. Annually, the level of funding is assessed holistically, considering a few factors, such as its alignment with SportSG's Vision 2030, whether it has achieved agreed KPIs, its capabilities in governance and execution and the existence of a sound plan for development of the sport overall.

For emerging sports that do not receive support from an NSA, funded directly by SportSG, Mr Darryl David and Mr Mohd Fahmi asked about how we can support aspiring athletes in these fields. We recognise that our athletes in emerging sports, such as powerlifting and pickleball, have performed well internationally. We are all very proud of them.

Therefore, I am pleased to announce that the OTSF will be expanded to support the Athletes Inspire Fund (AIF). The AIF provides funding support for athletes who represent Singapore in emerging sports. Athletes can apply as individuals or as a team. The funding support may cover cost items, such as airfare, accommodation, registration fees, visa fees, travel insurance and equipment. And there will be three application windows each year: in March, July and November. Applications for the March window will be from 1 to 31 March, so please start applying.

Another key component of our athlete support system are our coaches. Ms Jean See will be pleased to know that we are looking to upskill and professionalise exercise, sports and outdoor adventure coaches and instructors, which in turn, could increase their wages that is commensurate with their skillset.

For exercise professionals, SportSG will be instituting an accreditation framework under the National Registry for Exercise Professionals (NREP) in a later phase and we welcome inputs from NICA. Ms Jean See would also understand that the exercise, sports and outdoor adventure sectors are diverse with niche offerings and therefore it is difficult to introduce a cost norm.

However, we will continue to engage coaches to better understand their challenges and explore ways to further support them. For example, in the outdoor adventure sector, the Outdoor Adventure Education (OAE) Council is working on a capability development roadmap that will look into the salary and remuneration challenges for full-time and freelance OAE professionals.

We are open to see how SkillsFuture can further support their professional development and the OAE Council will also be looking at having more sites and facilities with affordable access. Chair, in Mandarin, please.

(In Mandarin): [Please refer to Vernacular Speech.] Sports help us maintain physical and mental health and is also one of the ways to build character, transform lives and encourage social mixing. The Government supports children and youths from different backgrounds to participate in sports through ActiveSG’s Academies and Clubs. In particular, the SportSG’s SportCares programme is committed to providing opportunities for marginalised groups to participate in sports.

Through the SportCares bursaries, children and youths from low-income families have increased access to quality sports, such as basketball, football, track and field, field hockey, water polo, canoeing, table tennis and so on.

So far, the SportCares bursaries have enabled over 480 children and youths to learn new sport activities. We hope that more Singaporeans and corporates can generously donate and actively contribute to SportCares.

(In English): Chair, through sports, we can grow closer as a community. Through sports, we can improve our health and instil a sense of confidence. Through sports, we can inspire a nation to go beyond our limits. In conclusion, sports can clearly enrich and empower our lives. So, I hope to rally all Singaporeans to take action today and let us all live better through sports.

The Chairman: We have time for clarifications. Ms Joan Pereira.

Ms Joan Pereira (Tanjong Pagar): Thank you, Chairman. I have a clarification for Minister of State Low. The move to harness the power of arts to improve well-being is laudable. Can the Minister of State share more on this initiative and the benefits that participation in the arts and cultural activities can bring to our seniors?

Ms Low Yen Ling: Chairman, I want to thank the Member Ms Joan Pereira. She spoke very passionately during her cut delivery last evening about this. Actually, she has been consistently giving feedback to MCCY to see how we can synergise our workstream with our MOH counterparts. Indeed, the arts can be harnessed to support greater well-being, empowering individuals to lead healthier and more fulfilling lives. She asked about evidence-based approach.

In preparing for this collaboration with SingHealth and AIC, we checked and overseas studies on the impact of arts on well-being have clearly shown that adults who participate in arts and cultural activities are: one, more likely to have better cognitive reserve in later life; two, less likely to develop dementia; three, have lower levels of frailty and chronic pain in older adulthood; four, less likely to experience loneliness and depression; and five, likely to live longer. So, we really encourage all Singaporeans: please get involved in the arts and cultural activities. It is really evidence-based.

Turning to her clarification, NAC's collaboration with healthcare partners – AIC, starting with SingHealth – to develop a framework for the arts to promote health and well-being, will bring the power of the arts into the lives of our seniors for a start. Then, we will open up for other segments later – Singaporeans and to expand arts access and the range of work of our arts and cultural practitioners. Initially focusing on seniors, the new framework to promote well-being through the arts will be built on an evidence-based approach, interdisciplinary expertise from both the arts and the healthcare sector and also based on existing research.

And the guide will include strategy on how arts programme can be designed to achieve well-being outcomes, best practices, case studies and also impact measuring tools that are in line with and very, very importantly, validated by our healthcare sector.

The Chairman: Mr Darryl David.

Mr Darryl David (Ang Mo Kio): Thank you, Chair. One clarification, which I believe could be for Minister of State Alvin. As many societies are being divided by issues and conflicts with ethnic and religious undertones, what are we doing specifically to pull our society together? And how are we in, our own small part, contributing to global efforts to build more cohesive societies?

Mr Alvin Tan: Sir, I thank Mr Darryl David for his clarification. Sir, if you think about the over two weeks of Committee of Supply debate, we talked about our economy, our transport, education, environment, manpower, health. As Minister Edwin mentioned, MCCY really brings up the end of the Committee of Supply debate.

MCCY stewards the heart of our nation. Our heart must be strong, it must be united. It cannot be split, it cannot be divided. But at times it is also moved, moved by issues that confront us, issues that affront us. Over the last couple of months, I have hosted a few of these very spiky dialogues. There was one I hosted with our Harmony Circle leaders on the Gaza crisis.

It was not easy to do, but it allowed for our leaders a safe space to discuss, to air and to also explain their perspectives. Today, this afternoon, I am going to host two young advocates as well. It is going to be a place for space, for platforms. I also mentioned earlier on that we are equipping our Harmony Circle leaders with the tools in which to touch on and engage in these very spiky issues. But we are also doing a lot.

You would have known that many of the Harmony Circles came together to raise funds for the Gaza crisis, the humanitarian crisis there, and we will continue to do so. But I also want to take us a step back and think about, because the Member mentioned cohesive societies.

We have had two iterations of the International Conference on Cohesive Societies. These two editions, we brought together of about a thousand leaders and youth from about 30 countries. They came, they discussed what it meant to be and how do you build Cohesive Societies. We brought them to our heartlands, we brought them to our Harmony Circles.

One feedback that came out of it was, how do you preserve and protect the social and racial and religious cohesion that you have in Singapore? So, it dawned upon me and many of our Members that it is something that, as what Minister Edwin said, we have to cherish and we have to protect.

I still remember hosting some youths from Myanmar and they were fresh off the Rohingya crisis. We brought them to Chinatown and we showed them the Fairfield Methodist Church, Buddha Tooth Relic Temple, Chulia Mosque as well as Sri Mariamman Temple. It is something that we take for granted. They said this could never happen in their country.

So, when we engage in these dialogues, I think it is very important that we also, as we preserve, we want to make sure that in these dialogues, that we remember what we have and we continue to cherish all of that together. So, we will have more of these dialogues, we will create the spaces, the platforms, as well as the tools to preserve this precious racial and religious harmony.

The Chairman: Ms Sylvia Lim.

Ms Sylvia Lim (Aljunied): Thank you, Chair. I have a clarification for Senior Parliamentary Secretary Chua on supporting retired athletes. Earlier on, he ended off that response with this open-ended statement to say that the Ministry would explore how we could support former athletes better. I would like him to clarify whether this includes possibly looking at how we can support the healthcare needs of our retired athletes, especially for conditions which were associated with their sporting careers, because I think it is a very meaningful gesture that society can make.

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Mr Eric Chua: Sir, I thank the Member for her clarification. The short answer is yes, because we are looking at how we can support our retired athletes more holistically.

The Chairman: Ms Usha Chandradas.

Ms Usha Chandradas (Nominated Member): Sir, I thank Minister Edwin Tong and Minister of State Low for their very comprehensive replies to my cuts. I just have one clarification and that is on Gillman Barracks. Will MCCY be working with the Ministry of National Development (MND) to ensure that the artistic character of the space is preserved and what will be the plans for existing tenants of the space?

Ms Low Yen Ling: Chairman, I want to thank Ms Usha Chandradas on the question of Gillman Barracks. MND will be starting heritage and environmental studies in the second quarter this year. But I want to assure her and also the tenants at Gillman Barracks that the tenants at Gillman Barracks can continue to stay on till the end of their leases.

HDB, URA and the Singapore Land Authority (SLA) have shared that any further extension or retention of the current uses in Gillman Barracks will be assessed at a later point when their studies are over and when the development plans are ready.

I want to assure Ms Usha Chandradas and also arts tenants at Gillman Barracks and, in fact, our arts and culture sector that NAC will certainly work with the relevant agency – MND, HDB, SLA and also URA – to support the art tenants where possible and if some of them are planning and thinking of relocation, we will certainly work together with the relevant agencies to facilitate their relocation. For example, supporting them and pointing them to available spaces that they can possibly consider.

I want to assure the Member that we are committed to supporting the development of a vibrant and sustainable arts sector in Singapore and that involves supporting our artists, programme activation and of course, providing spaces. If I can take one minute to share with Ms Usha Chandradas and, in fact, the sector, they would have observed that, in fact, in the last few years we can see that the visual arts sector has really continued to grow and flourish over the years.

It was mentioned a bit earlier but it bears repeating again. The Tanjong Pagar District Park is a very exciting and evolving space with the Singapore Art Museum and also a number of art galleries and art businesses currently sited there. Both Minister Edwin Tong and myself talked about Singapore Art Week 2023 and Singapore Art Week 2024. NAC has also supported the growing creative developments at the Tanjong Pagar District Park through programmes, such as the sonic sessions during the Singapore Art Week 2024 this year featuring the performances by local musicians and artists.

Singapore also plays host to leading showcases and art fair, such as the recently concluded ArtSG which saw a line-up of 114 galleries from 33 countries and territories, attracting a record attendance of more than 45,000 visitors during the 2024 edition, the one that just recently concluded.

I want to assure the Member that the NAC's arts infrastructure and spaces have grown over the years. From 2010 to 2023, the Arts gross floor area (GFA) increased by 42%, from 66,000 square metres to 94,000 square metres. I want to assure the Member that we will be working very closely with our MND counterparts and their agency to give the necessary support to the art tenants. I also want to assure the Member that we will work with the partners in the arts and culture sector to develop a vibrant and sustainable arts sector.

The Chairman: I hear all your assurances. Ms Hany Soh.

Ms Hany Soh (Marsiling-Yew Tee): Chairman, I have two clarifications. First is in relation to providing more support to inspire our young to embrace and pursue their passion in sports. I am heartened to hear from the Minister's speech that there will be more sporting opportunities, for example, through inter-school sports tournaments. However, I do hope that the Ministry can continue its efforts to urge other stakeholders, for example, like the Singapore Sports School, to do more in the community, with the community, for the community.

Some examples can be done through events that are jointly organised with the grassroots. For example, like a badminton clinic in which our Woodgrove CSC has organised with partners, such as Singapore Badminton Association and SportsSG, where the Team Singapore athletes, our shuttlers came forward. Apart from imparting their skills, they also take the opportunity to share more about their own personal experience, how they have come through all of the challenges to becoming a professional sportsman.

The second clarification is on the Sports Facilities Master Plan. Apart from constructing and upgrading our current facilities that are operated by the ActiveSG, I wonder if we are also looking into working closely with MOE and its schools to offer more of their sporting facilities to the community. Take, for example, in Woodgrove where Innova Primary, has come forward to share with our Woodgrove CSC on a weekly basis its sports hall every Friday evening to organise badminton sessions for the community.

Mr Eric Chua: I thank the Member for her clarifications. If the Member had listened to my speech, there are a lot of plans coming up as part of the Sports Facilities Master Plan. Other than the Member, Mr Ong Hua Han has also mentioned that it is not just the hardware. It is also about the heart ware, what keeps the heart ware going. It is as much as it is about the hardware as it is about the software or the programmes that are running in the institutions.

We take the Member's point about having more programmes to collaborate with the schools, more programmes to collaborate with the community. In fact, if the Member had listened in to some of what I said for football earlier, the Member would know that a lot of it is vested and intertwined within our school system. The school football academies, for instance, we started with 10 in 2022. And now, in 2024, we have 15 academies that have been set up and includes five that are dedicated to girls as well. Across all the different checkboxes, schools, different genders and different sporting types, we are trying to do more of that, to popularise and propagate more sports, and working in collaboration with the community.

The Chairman: Ms Jean See.

Ms See Jinli Jean (Nominated Member): I thank the Minister for all the very encouraging announcements. I have three clarifications. The first is relating to the Major Sports Events Fund. My appeal is that for the Major Sports Events Fund, it will also provide learning opportunities for freelancers and ancillary services, for example, those doing content production in audio-visual (AV) and whether there can be learning opportunities for them to also shadow the international teams. Of course, the learning opportunities could also extend to Singaporeans who can front opening acts as well as festivals that accompany these major events.

The second clarification is for Minister of State Low Yen Ling. For the SG Arts Plan, this is something very exciting. We really welcome it. I just wanted to put across a point that while professional development is good, the other part is how we enable sustainable businesses. One of the biggest concerns is relating to payments or non-payments, contracts issues, as well as also safe work practices. I just wanted to put forth a proposal to the Ministry that in conceptualising the SG Arts Plan, whether this can be one of the agenda items in terms of looking at the sustainable practices and working with stakeholders like NICA and the Visual, Audio, Creative Content Professionals Association, Singapore (VICPA) to put this as one of the agenda in developing the arts ecosystem in Singapore.

The third clarification to Senior Parliamentary Secretary Eric Chua. We certainly welcome the Athletes Inspire Fund for emerging Sports. The ask is that for the coaches who are supporting these athletes in emerging sports, that there could also be more support in terms of their professional development.

Mr Edwin Tong Chun Fai: Sir, I thank Ms See for her support and also for her comments. Indeed, like many other grants and funds that we have, we will use them strategically. It is focused on bringing major sports events into Singapore, invigorate the system here. And as I mentioned earlier also, using the platform of these major international sporting events and the quality of those events to support the development of our local athletes. So, we will do that strategically.

To the Member's specific point about involving local players for training and so on, the answer is clearly yes, we will do so. I want to cite two examples to the Member to illustrate what I mean. Last year, we hosted the inaugural Olympics e-Sport Week, the first time the event was here, supported many by local contractors. It is not just about learning how to organise such an event and learning the ropes and understanding how it is done and getting the know-how, organisational know-how, but also being a partner with many of the parties. Many Singapore companies, SMEs were involved in part of the running of the programme on a contract basis. So, there is also employment opportunity there.

In the same way, we are now hosting the World Table Tennis Smash in Singapore. In fact, this week, for those Members who are done with Committee of Supply and have nothing else to do, please go and support the Singapore team, Izaac Quek and others will be playing. Also a major event, a grand slam of the table tennis world, hosted in Singapore, but also supported by many other secondees and trainees from Singapore Table Tennis Association, from SportSG, who help to run the event in partnership with the International Table Tennis Federation, so, knowledge transfer, know-how, how we manage an event like this, how we manage the overall flow of the event, plus also some of the Singapore corporates being direct partners.

These two examples, I hope, assure Ms See that whenever we use the Fund, there will always be a strategic goal behind what else we can do to impact Singapore and Singaporeans.

Ms Low Yen Ling: Chairman, I want to thank the Member, Ms See, for the suggestion on the sustainable practices. I want to assure her that in MCCY and also NAC, we are aligned with NICA. In fact, I recall coming into MCCY, it was during the COVID-19 years, so we had many Zoom sessions with NICA and the various agencies. We pulled this whole-of-Government, multi-agency committee together to support our SEPs. Like what Minister Edwin Tong has mentioned, more than a third of our arts and cultural practitioners are freelancers. We are certainly aligned with the Member in supporting them, in terms of strengthening their resilience, in terms of enhancing and ensuring better career stability. That is why we made the announcement today.

The Arts Resource Hub is a very important place for our SEPs, not only as a co-working space for collaboration, but also a place for them to sort of attend some of these important courses, whether it is digital literacy, financial literacy and so on. The Member's proposed sustainable practices is something that NAC will certainly follow up and look into and work in consultation with NICA.

The Chairman: Senior Parliamentary Secretary Chua.

Mr Eric Chua: Sir, I thank the Member for her support for the Athletes Inspire Fund. I give her assurance that so long as a coach is registered with either the National Registry of Coaches or the National Registry of Exercise Professionals, he or she is eligible for support under these two schemes. CoachSG will work with relevant agencies and bodies like NICA to be sure that our coaches are well-supported.

The Chairman: Mr Keith Chua.

Mr Keith Chua (Nominated Member): I thank the Minister of State Alvin Tan for expanding on The Collective. It would be very helpful to know a bit more about this and what it might look like as we move this into fruition. For example, is the focus on strong collaborative philanthropy to help our community? Will it galvanise all our community together in this effort, recognising that the key players in this are the Community Foundation of Singapore, the Ministry of Social and Family Development, Community Chest and supported by MCCY?

The Chairman: Minister of State Alvin Tan, we are approaching our guillotine time. I hope your response will be a short one.

Mr Alvin Tan: Sir, the short answer to Mr Keith Chua is yes. The Collective is another platform for the community to come together and MCCY will continue to support that, to bring different stakeholders to contribute their financial as well as mentoring resources, to better support lower-income families.

But it is also more than just about raising donations. It is about raising awareness of the needs of the community. So, you have these resources and then, you have these needs. If you are part of a corporate or individual and you want to know where to deploy your capital, your time, your expertise, The Collective will be able to do that for you. We will announce more details later.

The Chairman: With that last clarification and response, can I invite Mr Sitoh Yih Pin, if you like, to withdraw your amendment?

Mr Sitoh Yih Pin (Potong Pasir): Mr Chairman, I would like to thank all Members of Parliament for their speeches and the MCCY team for their effort and hard work. With that, Sir, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

The sum of $2,098,737,600 for Head X ordered to stand part of the Main Estimates.

The sum of $349,751,400 for Head X ordered to stand part of the Development Estimates.