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Statement By The Second Minister For Information, Communications And The Arts, Dr Vivian Balakrishnan, In Parliament During COS Debate (MICA) On 29 February 2008

 

The Creative Industries

  

  1. Mr. Chairman, Sir.

  2. For 2005, which unfortunately is the most recent year for which we have official statistics, the value added of the Creative Industries in Singapore grew by 8%. It reached a total value of S$7.6b1 and therefore contributed to about 3.9% to Singapore’s GDP2. From 2002 to 2005, The value added per worker in the Creative Industries grew by 4.8% to reach approximately $75,000 in 2005. Unfortunately, this is lower that the Singapore average of $86,000 in that same year. So this shows that there is still much progress that needs to be achieved in this sector as far as the creative capacity and the value add of each worker is concerned. Having said that, the employment in the Creative Industries now amounts to slightly in excess of a 100,000 workers. That’s 4.4% of total employment in Singapore. So that’s not an insignificant sector that we need to pay attention to.
  3. Let me move on to the issue of design, which several members have referred to.

    Design  
  4. The Design Competitiveness Report3, which is based on data supplied by the World Economic Forum, showed that Singapore has improved from number 22 in the year 2002, to 16 in 2005. Not yet in the top 10. But we’re making progress. Singapore designers are also winning more international awards. For example, NUS Industrial Design graduate Donn Koh became the first Singaporean and first designer trained in Asia, to win one of the world’s most coveted design prizes, the International BraunPrize.
  5. Mr Baey Yam Keng asked how the government promotes good design in public amenities. I totally agree with you. I think we do need to pay attention to this element because after all, that’s what we see everyday. I was just sharing a private joke with the Minister for Transport and I think he agrees with you that if we can make ERP gantries even more impactful from the design perspective, maybe people will be less angry with the Ministry. That may be wishful thinking. I’ll give you another example. DesignSingapore has launched a nationwide programme called “10TouchPoints” in which we were looking for public suggestions on how to re-design public amenities. I did not check if any suggestions came in for ERP gantries but there were many other suggestions, including recycling bins bus stops and other examples. In fact, I believe the winning design was a creative redesign for recycling bins and you will soon see this at our Changi airport.
  6. Ms Penny Low asked a relevant question. She asked if MICA has set up any agencies specifically to match companies with designers. DesignSingapore’s initial focus was to first assemble a critical mass of talent in the design sector and we sought to do that by developing Singaporean designers as well as leading international designers. This was done through the DesignSingapore Studio series, which so far has seen Singapore designers working with international designers, such as Toshiyuki Kita and exhibiting their products and works at the Milan Fair. I totally agree with you that our next step must be to encourage Singapore companies to integrate design into their products and to, therefore, work with our designers in order to create more compelling products. I think the example which you cited, of MP3 players is the most apt example.
  7. So therefore, building both design capacity and embedding that design ability into our major industries will be our key priorities as we move to the new DesignSingapore 2.0 blueprint, details of which will be released later this year.

    Media
     
  8. Ms Penny Low also asked for an update on our media development efforts. MDA has spent time and resources in developing capabilities, grooming enterprises, and cultivating demand.
  9. For example, last year, more than 5,000 media professionals and students received MDA-supported training to in order to upgrade their skills. We will continue to attract experienced international media talents to Singapore as well.
  10. I must also tell this house that Singapore companies are quite successfully co-producing TV programmes, animations and feature films with leading overseas partners. In fact, some 100 local media companies participated in six key trade events such as MIPTV, MIPCOM and Cannes Film Market last year, and they secured an estimated US$600 million in deals. Not a bad start.
  11. In the area of Interactive & Digital Media, we’re also attracting both international and local companies to engage in media R&D. As members had pointed out, we need to go beyond just marketing, and sales and distribution but move up the value chain. And R&D represents the cutting edge of that value chain. In 2007, under a multi-agency initiative, 23 IDM R&D projects with an estimated business spending of $126M were awarded. But these are long-term projects. It will take time for us to see whether they bear fruit.
  12. Ms Low rightly pointed out that Singapore is a newcomer to the IDM field, and there is a lot more that needs to be done. Details of the Singapore MediaFusion 2015 blueprint, will be released later this year.

    Literary Arts and the Publishing Industry
     
  13. Ms Fatimah Lateef’s question about the National Book Development Council (NBDC) and nurturing writers in Singapore is very timely. Under the Singapore Writers Centre initiative, the NBDC organizes year-round activities, including courses, workshops featuring international writers4, networking opportunities, and supporting resources. All these, together with festivals such as the Singapore Writers’ Festival, have helped to boost the number of local titles published in Singapore by 6% in 2006. And that represents a total of more than 23,300 publications. I don’t have the language breakdown. I’ll get my staff to give you that later on.

    Creative Community Singapore

  14. I just want to end by re-emphasising the point that this is still all about talent. Just last month I visited google and I found 26 Singaporeans working for google, who’re engineers. They said they had joined this company where engineers consider themselves damn smart and they think they’re going to change the world by working in that company. We need to do the same in Singapore, to give our top talent the opportunity to change the world by utilising their potential and their talent. And the other point, about this space and IDM and media, is that it is such a quickly changing field. The opportunities change from year to year and the real opportunities lie at the interface of arts, business and technology. So it is no longer about right brain or left brain and it is no longer about artists and engineers. But our students need to have the capacity to transact and look for value and opportunities at these interstices. And therefore what we’re doing now in our education system, in our support for the eco system and for enterprises, I believe, will create many opportunities for our students and our top talent in the future. So I’m optimistic that this sector is set to lift off.

1 (nominal VA)

2 (nominal GDP)

3 Report “Global Design Watch: April 2006”, by DESIGNIUM, the New Centre of Innovation in Design, at the University of Art and Design in Helsinki.

4 Such as James Bonnet and Andrea Brown