Cultural policy, creative economy and arts higher education in renaissance Singapore

This book chapter studies arts higher education in postcolonial Singapore. Since the tail end of the twentieth century, Singapore has seen an astonishing investment, development, and growth in the cultural and creative industries aimed at creating a renaissance city-state. Singapore with a world-class transport, public housing, financial, and industrial systems also boasts a world-class educational system placing it at pole position above most developed economies in the Western world for its quality education and high literacy rate amongst its citizens. This chapter demonstrates the critical link between arts higher education and economic output and how Singapore's renowned and established arts schools - Lasalle College of the Arts (1984) and the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (1938) - remain central to the creative economy as producers of art, artists, and designers, even as local universities and polytechnics jump into the fray to supply much needed manpower to fuel the creative economy. This chapter first maps the development of the creative economy through key cultural policies and locates the place of arts higher education in Singapore. It demonstrates that the weighted hand of cultural policy, whilst critical to the establishment of a creative economy, is largely passive on the place of artist education within the world-class conventional educational system.