"Using the Arts to Build Bridges and Deepen Our Identity": Speech by President Tharman Shanmugaratnam at LASALLE40 Gala Night on 8 November 2024 at LASALLE College of the Arts

Mr Peter Seah, Chairman of LASALLE

Professor Steve Dixon, President of LASALLE

Distinguished guests

Ladies and gentlemen

1. It is truly a pleasure to be with you this evening at LASALLE’s 40th anniversary celebrations. 

2. LASALLE has been a precious stone in Singapore education, from the very time Brother Joseph McNally set up the St. Patrick’s Arts Centre in two rented classrooms in St Patrick’s School in 1984. Today, with its 2,400 students across a full spectrum of arts and design disciplines, and as a founding pillar of the government-supported University of the Arts Singapore, LASALLE's gleam shines across our arts landscape, in Singapore and indeed the region.  

3. It was a privilege for me to be at LASALLE for your convocation ceremony 20 years ago, when you were still at Goodman Road and had just been awarded Accredited Institution status by the Open University in the UK. And to be with you at the topping-out ceremony for this beautiful campus in 2006, and at other opportunities since, including the Launch of the Brother Joseph McNally Centenary Celebrations in August last year.

The arts as contributor to economic and social wellbeing

4. LASALLE has helped Singapore advance the arts and the imagination, for the good of both society and economy. Your alumni have made their mark, as Cultural Medallion and Young Artist Award winners, as curators of biennales and the films and choreography at our National Day Parade shows, and in capturing our minds through the visual and performing arts, song and dance, and design. 

5. LASALLE has also from its early days till today involved diverse segments of the community in the arts in meaningful ways – from partnering the Singapore Prisons Service for its art training and to participating in The Purple Parade.

6. And through your partnerships with industry and other academic institutions, you are showing how the arts can help spur economic innovation and uplift social wellbeing in a wide range of areas:

   1. Together with automotive companies such as Aston Martin and Hyundai, LASALLE students have designed car wraps.

   2. They have been partnering the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) in the design of the bodyshell an electric sportscar prototype.

   3. With tech companies such as Samsung, they have designed wearables and phone accessories, made for water-resistance among other features.

   4. LASALLE’S students exhibited innovative furniture at multiple venues across Marina Central district earlier this year, inspired by places, histories and cultures of Singapore. And designed practical wayfinding signs when residents in Zhenghua found new BTO estates difficult to navigate.

   5. They worked with the National University of Singapore (NUS) on a Performance and Health symposium, which explored synergies  between the performing arts and health – such as how therapeutic drama and fine art therapy can help in the management of dementia and Parkinson’s Disease, puppetry in fostering intergenerational engagement.

   6. And in the same vein, they worked with Trinity College Dublin to present the satellite Creative Brain Week in Singapore, which looks at how the arts could support brain health and brain science.

   7. LASALLE’s Masters of Arts in Art Therapy has qualified some 255 art therapists since it was started. And its new Masters of Arts in Music Therapy is developing graduates who use the creative process of making art and self-expression to promote emotional, mental and physical wellbeing.

   8. LASALLE’s entrepreneurs too are innovating across several domains - from designing functional yet fashionable clothing for persons with disabilities, to combating food waste through upcycling and recycling workshops. 

Using the arts to build bridges, and deepen our identity

7. Each of these contributions are tangible and exciting. But there is also a broader, less tangible, but no less meaningful impact in what LASALLE does, together with the growing field of artists and those appreciating the arts in Singapore. 

8. You are helping to build and strengthen the bridges that deepen and broaden our sense of ourselves as Singaporeans.

   1. The bridges between our evolving cultures, that not only infuse elements of one into the other, but highlight the humanity and reverence for nature in all of them.

   2. Bridges that promote empathy and understanding between generations who have lived very different lives in Singapore;

   3. Bridges that bring acceptance of those with different convictions and different perspectives of what a good society should be.

   4. Bridges between Singaporeans and the peoples of the region around us. 

9. I thank LASALLE - from its founding community to those who have steered the college over the years, including Peter Seah, Koh Seow Chuan and Edmund Tie who are here, to all among you who have been professional leaders and teachers, to the alumni and students, and to all your donors and partners - for enabling LASALLE to help us all imagine and make the future we want together.