Cultural Paradise In Singapore travel tips and stories. Vacations ideas, cruises, spa and resorts

ON a wonderful Saturday evening last summer in the Dhoby Ghaut neighborhood of Singapore, a few hundred people — residents and in-the-know tourists — stood or sat in rows of plastic chairs taking swigs of Tiger Beer retrieved from an ice-filled inflatable kid’s pool. The crowd had assembled to see 10 local artists — photographers, a painter, a fashion designer, a filmmaker — present their work, with a white wall standing in for a projector screen. The biannual gathering, named Rojak for the inventive Singaporean-Malaysian salad, is one aspect of a recent effort to raise Singapore’s cultural profile.

Whereas the government is luring international artists and architects to Singapore, local gallery owners, artists and entrepreneurs are finding innovative ways to nourish homegrown art and fashion and, at the same time, challenge the image of a buttoned-up Singapore, better known for its sparkling high-rises and mall culture than an independent arts scene.

Called a “cultural desert” too many times to count, the Lion City has never been associated with the thriving art and design scenes of places like Jakarta or Bangkok. Rather, it’s seen as a bastion of sanitized, chewing-gum-free efficiency, admired for its modernity and order in otherwise chaotic Southeast Asia. It’s a place where creative expression hasn’t been cultivated. Years ago, visitors interested in art and design were, for the most part, limited to contemporary-art-shy commercial galleries and exhibitions at foreign cultural centers like the Goethe-Institut or Alliance Française. There were — and still are — institutional options like the National Museum of Singapore, the Singapore Philatelic Museum and the Singapore Art Museum, which became the city-state’s first visual arts center when it opened in 1996. Local fashion designers are also trying to create a following, no small feat given Singapore’s more than 200 shopping malls, most of which focus on international labels like Gucci and Louis Vuitton.

However, the best thing to know about Singapore is that people are now buying local and realizing that what makes Singapore special is what Singaporeans make and create….