Kampong Java arts space slated to open in 2025
The National Arts Council (NAC) and Singapore Land Authority (SLA) announced on Dec 27 that the tender for the long-gestating Kampong Java arts space has been awarded to 19SixtyFive.
The creative agency’s proposal beat out four other bidders in the July tender for the yet-to-be-named arts space which occupies a 2,659 sq m site. Its plans for the five restored heritage houses, which will be progressively ready from 2025, include a new annual multidisciplinary arts festival that will have live performances, art markets and industry talks.
It will also offer new studio spaces and acoustically treated studios to arts tenants for “creative incubation”, with lower rates for budding artists and students. Tenants will pay different rates, depending on how long they want to lease spaces.
The new envisioned arts hub, first announced in 2021 by Minister for Culture, Community and Youth Edwin Tong as “a space for artist-led innovation and creation”, includes co-working offices and a restaurant or cafe.
19SixtyFive organised indie music festival St Jerome’s Laneway Festival when it still ran in Singapore and produces woman-led alternative music event The Alex Blake Charlie Sessions, which in 2024 featured a concert line-up across two stages, a club night, film screenings, a pop-up bookstore and an art exhibition.
NAC and SLA previously said that the winning operator will function not just as an administrator, but also likely the overall artistic director of the hub, which should have a cohesive identity and be able to engage the wider public.
This model of “industry-led” arts housing should ideally allow arts groups to operate at arms’ length from the authorities. Rent is expected to be lower than prevailing commercial rates, but be higher than NAC spaces, which are subsidised by up to 90 per cent.
Under the awarded tender, 19SixtyFive will run the space for five years – longer than the usual three in NAC spaces – with an option to renew for a second four-year term, “dependent on 19SixtyFive’s performance in running the space in accordance with NAC and SLA’s set objectives for it”.
19SixtyFive had the second highest of five bids according to monetary value, at $18,000. The special nature of the project meant that evaluation criteria for Kampong Java was deliberately skewed, so there was a greater emphasis on the quality of proposals (70 per cent) over price (30 per cent).
The top bidder in terms of price was iGym Fitness, at $23,018.
Arts groups previously raised practical concerns that rooms were too small and not well soundproofed, as well as primary issues about costs and artistic autonomy.
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