“Upon assuming the position of General Manager of The Arts House in June 2003, I mulled hard to find a means whereby Arts could be instrumental in changing lives within the community. Reflecting from my personal experience, I found that growing up in 70s in the HDB heartland of Toa Payoh, many families (including mine) were more consumed with making ends meet than fully developing our full creative potential, especially in the area of the arts. If we had artistic talents, the opportunities were never given.

I thought that the social conditions have changed where today’s youth are more exposed and given opportunities through various initiatives. However to my utmost surprise, there are still a sizable group of artistically talented children within our community from social-economic disadvantaged backgrounds whose families do not possess the means to ever consider the Arts as an avenue to a better tomorrow.

I then decided that we should not deny the opportunity for any child who has artistic talent or even the simple desire to be part of the artistic community to be trained and eventually contribute to the creative industry even if he or she is distanced by the economic means of his/her family.

During our first year in 2004, with our limited resources at the Arts House, we conceived a programme titled “Out of the Blue” which seeks to professionally train and showcase our talented children. Discovering and nurturing of talent in this age range helps youth and their families to better plan their future direction and aspiration in life.

The hugely popular JazzKids was born out of this programme and became a big success with sold-out performances at The Arts House and later at the Esplanade. More importantly, the programme is giving these children the valuable option to seriously consider the performing arts as careers. For The Arts House, it was gratifying that we were able to help make a life-changing contribution to the lives of these less privileged children.

Wanting to take this further, I then convinced my Board and my colleagues to share this conviction and we decided to champion the setting up of a ‘Budding Artists Fund’ to give every child in Singapore an opportunity to develop his/her talent

Personally, I trust that you share our belief that no child should be denied an opportunity to develop or even just desire to cultivate their artistic gift and the ‘Budding Artists Fund’ is a mean for them to be part of the artistic community.”