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2021 | NUS Centre for the Arts' Arts Ambassadors Programme

I am fortunate to be a part of the NUS' Centre for the Arts' Arts Ambassadorship Programme. Together, with six other ambassadors we were given the chance to work behind-the-scenes at arts events organised by NUS' Centre for the Arts (CFA).


We were invited to many CFA events. This is the ambassadors at The Projector catching Eva Tang's The Songs We Sang (2015).

CFA Ambassadors were also given the chance to participate in Bag of Memories for NUS Arts Festival 2021.

The CFA team and all 7 CFA Ambassadors during our discussion for the first virtual HERE! Arts Carnival.


MARKETING - NUS Arts Festival 2021: A Question of Time

NUS Arts Festival usually includes faculty members, local and international artists responding to an identified theme.

I completed a stint with the Marketing Communication's Team where I conceptualised, filmed and edited CFA Ambassador Vlogs: NAF'2021 Edition, an Instagram TV video series that explored the arts through the journey of NUS student artists in the NUS Arts Festival 2021: A Question of Time. The festival was held from 19 March to 16 April, 2021.

I had hoped that the sharing from student artists would demystify performances and the arts for the NUS student population who do not have much interaction with the arts.


These were the two videos that I edited with Davinci Resolve. It took some trial and error to get the dimensions right in this experiment with the portrait video mode.


PROGRAMMING - HERE! Arts Carnival 2021: Destination HERE!

NUS' HERE! Arts Carnival is typically an on-campus carnival that welcomes new and returning students. The carnival would showcase the different CFA arts groups within NUS. Due to the COVID-19 situation, the HERE! Arts Carnival 2021: Destination HERE! was designed to be a virtual travel journey from 19 August to 20 August, 2021.


During this time, I pitched ideas on how to design the virtual experience for audiences. How could we simulate travelling from one "country" to another? What kind of technical support would be needed? How could we keep "zoom fatigued" audiences engaged? As there were instances of Zoom outages then, I also pushed for having an additional communication channel during the event.

We eventually agreed on the existing NUS Arts on Campus Telegram Channel. In addition to being used to disseminate Zoom links of the destinations, the threads feature provided a platform for audiences to engage with one another if they chose to. With this design, the number of subscriptions on the channel increased by about 110% from around 70 followers to 150 followers.


LEARNING POINTS

Through the experience, I gained a different perspective of how the different arts groups were brought together for campus-wide events. Being a part of such a programme gave me a sense of how mentorship could be structured, how to incorporate ideas from different stakeholders and a valuable reminder about designing the audience's experience.

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