Residents dabble in art as festival draws to close

Kampong Glam event among nine held over the weekend, marking end of fourth PAssionArts Festival

Annabelle Wong, nine, spent her afternoon yesterday decorating a cardboard house big enough for her to crawl into at Kampong Glam Community Club.

She decorated the house with doorknobs and flowers while her mother and grandparents milled about with food and drinks.

The St Margaret's Primary School pupil was taking part in a visual art installation piece called My Home, which had 150 residents paint nine cardboard houses.

"There are a lot of activities and games. I took part in colouring and made a stamp. It's very fun," Annabelle told The Straits Times.

About 500 residents were at the community club yesterday for the final weekend of the islandwide PAssionArts Festival.

Families and neighbours queued up to take pictures at a photo booth and made tote bags, bookmarks and photo frames according to the We Love Singapore festival theme.

The Kampong Glam event was one of nine festival villages that ran over the weekend, marking the end of the fourth PAssionArts Festival.

Others were held in neighbourhoods including Bukit Batok, Marsiling and Pasir Ris.

Last Saturday, an open-air rock festival was held at Bukit Timah, featuring acts such as Caracal, Havana Social Club, Plainsunset, Pleasantry and Silhouette.

Since the PAssionArts Festival started on July 12, 63 festival villages have been held across Singapore over eight weekends.

In all, about 250,000 residents have participated in arts events and activities ranging from photography exhibitions to live music shows. Also featured were sound gardens, light installations and carnival booths.

As part of the PAssionArts Festival, some 100 artists and 50,000 residents got together to adorn the facades of 105 Housing Board blocks with large-format art installations in celebration of the Republic's 50th birthday.

For instance, Block 58 in Marine Terrace was painted with icons such as the Singapore Flyer and the Merlion.

At the Kampong Glam event, Ms Denise Phua, Mayor of Central Singapore Community Development Council and an MP for Moulmein- Kallang GRC, said the festival and its theme was a way of "showing our love and commemoration of our past, present and future".

"We hope to use art to encourage residents to celebrate SG50."

kxinghui@sph.com.sg

This article was first published on August 31, 2015.
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