NHB’s
vision is to make Singapore’s heritage an
enriching part of everyone’s life as well
as to bring heritage to people. The bus makes heritage
more accessible to people and shows that heritage
can be fun and relevant to our lives.
A design challenge
A team of designers, educators and administrators
worked hard to ensure that the bus would be a
hit
with younger children and the young at heart.
It was certainly a challenge as our designers had
never designed an exhibition to be housed in a bus
before. The team had to decide on the best way to
showcase and arrange the stories and ensure that
at least 20 children could be in the bus at any
one time.
Other concerns were the space constraints, running
costs and the limited manpower.
Working well with
partners
We wanted to drive the project and work with partners
who would help to execute the programme.
We were fortunate to get some start-up capital from
the Ministry of Information, Communications and
The Arts’ innovation fund. We then approached
SBS Transit Ltd for the sponsorship of the bus and
its maintenance. We also asked SBS Transit to provide
a driver.
The next step was to identify a responsible and
reliable project manager who could also troubleshoot
and help with some of the creative elements of the
project. We identified ACT 3 International, which
we had worked with for our schools’ programmes.
For a fee, they would create and run the workshops
and take care of the activity sheets, fabrication
of the exhibits, scheduling and logistics.
Besides featuring hands-on elements, we thought
introducing IT elements would be helpful. We approached
Nanyang Polytechnic’s School of Design and
commissioned the final-year students to produce
two animation clips. Our officers worked with the
lecturers and students on the clips.
Enriching learning
experience
Visitors discovering that learning about our
heritage can be really fun!
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The
mobile exhibition has helped to bring the heritage
message and experience to the community, especially
the schools.
The project has also created an opportunity for
NHB to deploy our cultural capital in many ways.
Our NHB staff and local talents learnt about Singapore’s
heritage through creative and innovative ways. Our
exhibition designers and fabricators had to think
out of the box when designing the interactive exhibits,
and find ways to overcome the space constraints.
The artists had to stretch their imagination to
bring our myths and legends to life. Likewise, our
drama teachers, facilitators and writers had to
think of creative ways to engage the children and
entice them to return.
To date, HOTM has been fully booked by primary schools.
It has also visited Sentosa, the Istana, our museums
and shopping centres. Since its launch earlier this
year, HOTM has reached out to 102,600 people.
