Organiser:
TRCL
Festival Director:
Jeffrey Tan
Management Team: Angeline Go, Candice Chee, Idwan, Ivan Chia, Peggy Leong, Phan Ming Yen, Tan Tee Tong, and Vinitha Ratnasamy.
Web Developer & Designer: Jaymz Yong
Trainers: Ahmad Shah, Eric Israel, Eva Tey, Joyce Alberto, Hazlan Saad, Norashikin Rahman. Nur Afiqah Rapee, Renuka Ulaganathan, Ridhwan, Rizal, and Subastian Tan.
Festival Director : Jeffrey Tan
Jeffrey Tan has been working as a theatre director, drama educator and arts producer since 1989. He holds a BA (Drama) from the Queensland University of Technology (Australia) and MA (Drama and Theatre Education) from the University of Warwick (United Kingdom).
He was Resident Director with The Theatre Practice (1997), Drama Lecturer with LASALLE SIA (1999), Associate Artistic Director with TheatreWorks (S) Ltd (2002), Assistant Director with the National Arts Council (2007) and Assistant Director, People’s Association (2012).
Jeffrey now freelances as consultant, producer and guest director or moderator to bridge audiences to performances. Jeffrey’s theatre productions for 2019 include “The Legend of Bukit Merah” — an Intergenerational Theatre between Kindergarten children and Seniors’ as part of BuySinglit 2019, “It’s Not Romeo and Juliat’ for Ageless Theatre, ‘MY Bridge of Love’ for the Marsiling Yew Tee community’s Bi Centennial play and ‘Open Homes’ with La Boite and Backbone theatre in Brisbane.
Jeffrey has presented keynotes, workshops and papers at various International Drama Conferences in Australia, Canada, Shanghai, Ning Bo, China, Athens, Greece, Hong Kong, Jamaica, Korea, Northampton, UK, Paris, Tainan, Taiwan, New Zealand. Jeffrey has been published in Drama Australia, National Journal, and Research in Drama in Education (RIDE) Journal. He also continues to sit on the National Arts Council’s External Theatre Panel.
Caricature Trainer : Norashikin Rahman
Shikin graduated from Ngee Ann Polytechnic with Diploma in Multimedia & Animation (Digital Animation), specialising in digital design and infocomm technology. She has combined both her digital training and passion for fine arts in her work since graduation. She has taught art and digital media in schools for more than 10 years and is an AMIS and MOE registered instructor as well as registered for NAC-AEP. She has completed the Specialist Diploma in Arts Education (NIE) and Certificate in Facilitating Arts Based Learning for Children with Special Needs by the Social Service Institue, both programmes supported by NAC.
Shikin has conducted many art classes in schools and at many National Library centres in a wide area of the arts, such as caricatures, cartooning, doodling, batik, claymaking, painting, photography and digital art. Her students range from pre-schoolers to primary and secondary students, as well as adult learners and teachers. She has done over 120 art shows in schools for the past 6 years, often to audiences of over 1,000 students.
She is also a professional caricaturist.
Previously, Shikin had taught art in schools as a relief allied art educator for the Ministry of Education.
Caricature Trainer : Eric Israel
Trained in Advertising Art from Baharuddin Institute, Eric spent over 30 years accumulating a wealth of experience and contacts in the advertising, creative design, hospitality, media and publishing industries as a draftsman, graphics designer, industrial designer, visualise, studio manager, art director and entrepreneur.
Shikin has conducted many art classes in schools and at many National Library centres in His art works include designing Sharity the Elephant when he was working with the National Council of Social Services as Art Director. He has also completed a 1-year diagnostic art therapy course by the College of Teachers, UK.
Eric founded Growing Paints in March 1998, with a passion to teach young children creative skills and freedom of expression through paints, colours and media. He believes that creativity is the essential ingredient of all learning. This builds upon studies in the S and UK which has proven art training to be useful in developing language and social skills in young children. He has trained thousands of children in art since 1998.
Since 2013, Eric has conducted many art workshops in schools and preschools with 360 Education as well as doing numerous art assembly performances. He often combines his quick painting and doodling methods with music at the art assembly performances and workshops. Eric has also performed and taught art at many community events and was the SG100 Art Ambassador with social enterprise We Love SGP.
Doodling Trainer : Hazlan Saad
With over 13 years of experience as an art instructor, Hazlan loves sharing his tips and tricks of creating wonderful works of arts. Being blessed to be able to teach at various platforms, he is able to communicate and engage his students and participants well and effectively.
Through the years he has worked with many schools, learning centers, big and small companies and various government offices. Along the way he managed to enter some of their artworks into the Singapore Book of Records for “Largest Acrylic Art Montage” (circa 2016-2017) and “Largest Logo Made Using Rubber Stamps” circa 2016–current.
Sharing simple drawing tips like drawing with shapes or unlocking secret painting techniques by old masters, he constantly surprises his students and pushes their artistic ability beyond their own expectations.
He believes that there is an artist in everyone. The ability to create and express oneself is present in all of us, just that the medium and styles may vary.
Doodling Trainer : Renuka Ulaganathan
Renuka’s journey as an educator started off as when she first decided to teach as a Visual Arts Instructor in 2010. She went around teaching mainstream schools in Singapore for about 5 years (Primary to JC levels). She was also working as an Academic Instructor and took on many challenging programmes that has given her the opportunity to work with CDC (Nurture), Pertapis Home for Children and Marymount Centre (Ahuva Good Shepherd) and so on.
In 2015, she signed up as an Art Educator in Pathlight School under the Vocational Track. The time she spent there was so meaningful and fulfilling, she shares. Working with teens with autism, learning about the challenges they face and being part of their world was an experience that cannot be compared to anything else. Her main purpose was to create as many opportunities for these special children as well as showcase their talents. She has organised exhibitions where parents can view their children’s masterpieces in an authentic exhibition setting held within Pathlight. She was part of the core team that helped to organize a School-wide exhibition and collate a coffee table book titled, “50 Points of View” which contains 50 different artworks and essays done by Pathlight students to commemorate SG50.
After spending more than 4 years in Pathlight — She felt that I needed to again move on and experience more, went back to being an Instructor. This was the same time she started teaching weekend art lessons for The Little Arts Academy (LAA).
Renuka, strongly believes every child has the ability and the capability to inspire other when given the right opportunity to do so!
Manga Trainer : Ahmad Shah
Ahmad Shah is a versatile visual art and music trainer who have been imparting knowledge and skills to all age levels.
With more than 10 years of experience, Ahmad Shah has also taught in numerous MOE primary and secondary schools and other government, corporate and private art institutions. Ahmad is very sound in the area of visual art and educational pedagogies, recognised in most institutions.
In visual art, he is much known for his wire making, batik, charcoal drawing and Manga workshops. With a much sort after personal style in his teaching and performing, Ahmad is a highly capable, effective, fun and dynamic individual.
Besides art making and designing, imparting skills and knowledge to children and youth is one of his passions. As such, he has enjoyed being on the training team of Little Arts Academy (LAA) from 2012 till present.
Hip-Hop Dance Trainer : Nur Afiqah Rapee
Nur Afiqah Rapee devoted her life to dance at the age of 13.
She joined the Arts Incubation Programme (AIP) at The Little Arts Academy (LAA) and 10 Square @ Orchard Central Youth Division for dance training and was a beneficiary of the Business Times Budding Artists Fund (BT BAF) c/o TRCL.
Since then, she has performed for various events and arts festivals across Singapore, Japan and China.
Curious to explore, Nur Afiqah furthered her studies at LASALLE College of the Arts. While in LASALLE, she had the opportunity to work with remarkable dance artists such as Lee Jae-young (Korea), Bill T Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company (USA), Christina Chan (Singapore), Aymeric Bichon (France), Kuik Swee Boon (Singapore), and Jacky Yu (Hong Kong).
Her training includes dance genres such as Jazz, Contemporary, Ballet and Hip hop. She has obtained a Diploma in Dance and BA (Hons) in Dance.
Hip-Hop Dance Trainer : Ridhwan
Ridhwan aka Wan or Wansmoof is a choreographer, performer and one of the pioneer members of Styles from Beyond, a leading professional hip-hop dance crew in Singapore. He has about 12 years of dance and coaching experience.
K-pop Dance Trainer : Eva Tey
Principal Dancer of Maya Dance Theatre (MDT) since 2015, Eva graduated with a First-Class Honours (BA) Degree in dance from Lasalle College of the Arts (2014). Trained in Bharatanatyam and contemporary dance, Eva contributes to the Asian contemporary dance expression of MDT working with resident choreographer, Kavitha Krishnan alongside international collaborators with MDT such as, Olivier Tarpaga (USA), Liz Lea (Australia) and Danang Pamungkas (Indonesia). Eva is interested in using the principles of dance therapy to expound the correlation between movement and emotions when she performs and creates her works.
K-pop Dance Trainer : Subastian Tan
Subastian started out as a hip-hop dancer and joined Maya Dance Theatre (MDT) in 2016. He has performed with the company in Quinzena de Dança de Almada Festival, Portugal (2016) and Busan International Performing Arts Festival 2018, Busan, South Korea and recently in their collaboration with IPTanz (Germany) for the inter-disciplinary dance-theatre work, “Puffing Bodies”. Subastian also is the programme leader of Diverse Abilities Dance Collective (DADC), a community initiative of MDT formed by artistic director Kavitha Krishnan in 2018. The collective is made up of persons with mixed abilities; they come together to co-exist in a space to share their passion for dance.
Subastian has been teaching dance in places such as 10 Square@Orchard Central, Down Syndrome Association and Pathlight. He also conducted workshops for The Flux Collective, in his university club SMU Eurhthymix and NUS Dance Ensemble, sharing his practice of dance inspired by different forms and disciplines. Through his teaching experience, he hopes to inspire and offer perspectives to everyone he connects with.
Subastian aims to continuously explore new forms of movements and work as project artist in independent works. Recently, he performed in Project Transits; Echoes of Waterloo. He is also interested in encouraging collaborations, especially inspired by the energy of street dance, through his personal project — Project Kinaesthesia.
Vocals Trainer : Joyce Alberto
A professional singer since she was 20 years old, Joyce won several singing competitions in Manila. Her range in music covers, TOP 40’s, Retro, Classic, Standard songs, Jazz, Bossa, and Latin Songs.
Joyce has been an active musician from 1989, travelling regionally to record and produce music. Her works have scored numerous regional accolades.
Notably — In 2010, Joyce joined the competition for 2010 YOG (Youth Olympic Games) to compose a song titled ONE WORLD. It was featured in the track album for YOG and was chosen as an ambassador to promote YOG 2010 in all over Singapore.
A music teacher at heart, she began teaching in 2011 and thus began her journey in educating and mentoring aspiring musicians.
Timbre Music Academy
Timbre Music Academy is a music academy that offers formal and practical music education that focuses on theory, technique and the real world aspects of a performing musician.
TMA is the only music school in Singapore with live music venues such as Timbre X @ The Artshouse. Over the years, we have curated and ran mentorship programs and competitions.
TMA has also been actively involved with other mentorship programs National Arts Council, National Environment Agency, NTUC and corporate clients such as Strepsils, and Rayban.