The LIVING MUSEUM: CONVERGENCES AND INTERSECTIONS BETWEEN AGING, HEALTH, ARTS, CULTURAL HERITAGE AND PLACE
In the United Nations's World Population Prospects 2015 Report, it is expected that the number of people age 69 or above will reach 1.4 billion in 2030. Singapore has one of the world's fastest aging population. The number of citizens age 65 and older increased to 14.4%, in 2017, up from 13.7% the year before. The government has recognized in 2018 that aging is one of two critical challenges facing the nation-state. The phenomenon of a rapidly aging population coupled with a reduction in fertility rate will have a severe impact on economic vitality, revenue from taxation, retirement social security savings, labor and the provision of health services for the older generation.
The Arts and Health
The benefits of the arts in promoting physical, mental and social well-being have been well researched and documented. Participating in the arts can help enrich the lives of the elders. It engenders learning of new skills, spurs creativity and supports self-expression. Museums around the world have dedicated public programs that cater to the elders, and the National Gallery Singapore is no exception. Together with the Deutsche Bank, NGS hosts groups of active elders for arts-related activities in the gallery. Taman Jurong's Community Museum is another excellent example, where artifacts and ephemera are carefully curated and proudly presented to the public. The community museum is not only a place to showcase the cultural heritage of Taman Jurong but is also a platform for intergenerational learning.
Aging and Place
Over 80% of Singapore's population lives in high rise public housing given the limited land available for development. As the government encourages its citizens to see their apartments as financial assets, it is not uncommon for many to sell, buy and live in several over their lifetimes. Each move generates more significant profits that serve as their retirement nest eggs. The culture of upgrading has its setbacks. Homes are no longer places for one to age. The sense of place and belonging is weak, and it lasts until the next upgrading.
On the other hand, as a neighborhood age, familiar shops or landmarks disappear. For example, the once famous dragon fountain in Whampoa, although still present, is inoperative. Instead of water, the empty pool was filled with a scattering of dried leaves. It is now replaced with a green turf, but unfortunately, a steel barrier around the fountain makes it an unwelcome place for the residents. Residents who have lived here for a long time cannot help but witness the difference between the once vibrant fountain and its current dormant, albeit slightly improved state. On the other hand, the younger generation moves out to newer, more appealing neighborhoods that provide one-stop retail, recreational and entertainment activities. Public spaces and amenities in the older ones fall behind in modern-day standards and expectations.
Aging is an emplaced process. Familiarity and daily rituals offer a sense of orientation, emotional attachment, and security for the Whampoa elders living in a fast-paced, changing city-state. Human geographers like Yi-Fu Tuan, Edward Relph, and G.D. Rowles have written extensively on the significance of human relationship to and experience of place. Through his study of elderly populations in urban and rural America, Rowles's work reveals the sense of isolation among them as illness or infirmity sets in, and one's lifespace is limited to one's home, leading to a gradual separation from the world beyond.
With the policy of moving from a hospital-centered to a home and community care model in Singapore, the re-activating of places in older communities with social and cultural activities and a more inclusive design is therefore highly essential. It includes thoughtful home designs, elder-friendly buildings, and public spaces, as well as green spaces for leisure, therapeutic and community activities. In land scarce Singapore, architects and designers will have to be creative in coming up with innovative solutions to meet the needs of an aging population.
Cultural Heritage
The cultural heritage of a nation includes both the tangible and intangible. The awareness and increased interest among Singaporeans in the city-state's history and cultural heritage are no doubt spurred on by the SG 50 celebration. Continuing from this laudable effort, Singapore identified 50 intangible cultural heritage elements as a step towards inclusion in UNESCO’s intangible cultural heritage list in April 2018. In 2011, the National Heritage Board produced a concise and well-researched publication titled Balestier. A Heritage Trail, which highlighted the broad architectural, social and cultural history of the area. Less attention, however, was focused on the intimate, personal history of longtime Whampoa residents, many who have lived there for over 40 years. For them, sharing their life stories- memories of growing up, getting married, raising a family in Whampoa and seeing its continuing transformation adds to the multicultural history and identity of the neighborhood. Equally important, the process of reminiscing provides a moment to take stock of their lives, find meaning and impart values to the next generation.
Living Museum
When viewed from the aforementioned perspectives, the Living Museum initiative in the National Heritage Board (NHB) supported Curating Whampoa project is an important and timely one. The project is co-conceptualized by the Tsao Foundation and Thomas Kong, a Singapore-licensed architect and an Associate Professor from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
The Living Museum collects, interprets and presents the diverse social life and rich intangible cultural heritage of Whampoa through the participation of residents, artists, designers, students and community-based workers in a series of thematic events. A variety of media and presentation platforms showcases the collaborative efforts of the participants. The Living Museum offers a broad, bottom-up and inclusive insight into a changing neighborhood that goes beyond the repository of objects within a building. It presents an alternative museum experience and displays that is people-centered, co-curated and reflects the memories, hopes, and values of Whampoa older residents. The Living Museum complements the mission of Tsao Foundation's Community for Successful Aging Whampoa (ComSA Whampoa), which seeks to provide effective bio- and psychosocial health care for the elders, and to fulfill their aspiration to age in place.
Methodology
Traditional functions in a museum such as curatorial, education, exhibition, and archival, are re-interpreted through the Living Museum. By re-contextualizing the functions, the method opens up unique opportunities for re-defining the role, purpose, and meaning of a museum in an aging community.
Curatorial
Traditional curatorial practice is often situated within the confines of a museum, led by a professionally trained curator, and is generally concerned with a specific collection. On the other hand, the popularity of Pinterest, for example, has spurred a new generation of grassroots curators for a wide range of topics and images. The Living Museum's bottom-up approach involves a much broader context than a traditional museum setting. The expanded curatorial strategy seeks a diversified and related field of everyday objects, people, spaces, and activities.
Education
Contemporary museums are actively engaging its audience through educational activities organized around its collection. Although the museum space engenders an informal learning environment, it remains within an institutional setting shaped by a formal education program. The education mission of the Living Museum is simultaneously narrower and broader and is more informal. It is centered around the topic of aging in place but includes capacity building among the elders. A learning moment happens when the elders re-tell the story of an artifact in their homes or during the exhibition. It occurs when secondary school students collaborate in preparing a dish based on a favorite recipe of the elders. It is also capacity building when the elders are taught how to use photography to share their favorite places in Whampoa or when they are exposed to the basic skills of curating.
Exhibition
Unlike a traditional museum or the community museum in Taman Jurong, the Living Museum does not have a permanent space in Whampoa. It is more like a pop-up installation at different locations chosen strategically to meet the exhibition objectives. The display of objects and collections curated for the Living Museum is temporary and distributed over the Whampoa neighborhood. The transient and mobile nature of the presentation takes into consideration the opportunity to reach out to a broader audience, both young and older within a short space of time and the modest budget for design and exhibition. Simplicity, modularity of parts for ease of transportation, setting-up, and durability of the public displays are critical considerations. Public areas below the flats, along a popular route, in a pavilion, at the food center, the forecourt of the Whampoa Community Club and the gallery of a secondary art school are some of the exhibition spaces. Besides sharing their collections, the elder participants are also involved in other ways, such as their written reflections of their favorite recipes and as docents to explain the collections and ideas behind the exhibits to the audience.
Archival
A museum can only display a small portion of its collection at any one time. The rest are carefully archived and kept in storage. While working on the Tangible Stories project, Associate Professor Thomas Kong created the concept of Social Archiving for the Living Museum. It explores a new form of archiving that combines curating, gift-giving, safekeeping, leaving of a personal legacy, placemaking and a renewal of the life of a collection through an in-person ritual and a digital interface for sustaining the social life of the collection locally and beyond. The concept is particularly pertinent in Singapore's aging society. Elder residents often have a rich and diverse collection of artifacts and ephemera but are forced to sell or discard them when they moved to a smaller studio apartment or if they have no one to pass on the collection. Social archiving also offers a more intimate platform for intergenerational learning and legacy building through the sharing of the stories related to the archived materials. Moreover, the sense of place, identify, and belonging can be promoted through social archiving. The provision of spaces for the display of and the holding of community events to give and share the collections can help to anchor and transform personal memories of Whampoa into a collective one nationally in a small nation-state like Singapore.
Conclusion
The Living Museum is an experimental and interdisciplinary initiative that lies at the intersection of aging, health, art, cultural heritage, and place. It is experimental because it strives to forge a new approach to the topic of aging in place among Whampoa residents, public health policymakers, community, and cultural workers, as well creative practitioners through the works and conversations generated over the two-year period. It is also messy and not easily categorized by nature of its interdisciplinary focus. Given the multiple issues surrounding aging in place, an interdisciplinary approach helps to identify convergences and intersections among the different disciplines and stakeholders. It opens up new initiatives, productive collaborations, fresh ideas, and learning opportunities that may otherwise lie within the purview of a single discipline or group.
In the United Nations's World Population Prospects 2015 Report, it is expected that the number of people age 69 or above will reach 1.4 billion in 2030. Singapore has one of the world's fastest aging population. The number of citizens age 65 and older increased to 14.4%, in 2017, up from 13.7% the year before. The government has recognized in 2018 that aging is one of two critical challenges facing the nation-state. The phenomenon of a rapidly aging population coupled with a reduction in fertility rate will have a severe impact on economic vitality, revenue from taxation, retirement social security savings, labor and the provision of health services for the older generation.
The Arts and Health
The benefits of the arts in promoting physical, mental and social well-being have been well researched and documented. Participating in the arts can help enrich the lives of the elders. It engenders learning of new skills, spurs creativity and supports self-expression. Museums around the world have dedicated public programs that cater to the elders, and the National Gallery Singapore is no exception. Together with the Deutsche Bank, NGS hosts groups of active elders for arts-related activities in the gallery. Taman Jurong's Community Museum is another excellent example, where artifacts and ephemera are carefully curated and proudly presented to the public. The community museum is not only a place to showcase the cultural heritage of Taman Jurong but is also a platform for intergenerational learning.
Aging and Place
Over 80% of Singapore's population lives in high rise public housing given the limited land available for development. As the government encourages its citizens to see their apartments as financial assets, it is not uncommon for many to sell, buy and live in several over their lifetimes. Each move generates more significant profits that serve as their retirement nest eggs. The culture of upgrading has its setbacks. Homes are no longer places for one to age. The sense of place and belonging is weak, and it lasts until the next upgrading.
On the other hand, as a neighborhood age, familiar shops or landmarks disappear. For example, the once famous dragon fountain in Whampoa, although still present, is inoperative. Instead of water, the empty pool was filled with a scattering of dried leaves. It is now replaced with a green turf, but unfortunately, a steel barrier around the fountain makes it an unwelcome place for the residents. Residents who have lived here for a long time cannot help but witness the difference between the once vibrant fountain and its current dormant, albeit slightly improved state. On the other hand, the younger generation moves out to newer, more appealing neighborhoods that provide one-stop retail, recreational and entertainment activities. Public spaces and amenities in the older ones fall behind in modern-day standards and expectations.
Aging is an emplaced process. Familiarity and daily rituals offer a sense of orientation, emotional attachment, and security for the Whampoa elders living in a fast-paced, changing city-state. Human geographers like Yi-Fu Tuan, Edward Relph, and G.D. Rowles have written extensively on the significance of human relationship to and experience of place. Through his study of elderly populations in urban and rural America, Rowles's work reveals the sense of isolation among them as illness or infirmity sets in, and one's lifespace is limited to one's home, leading to a gradual separation from the world beyond.
With the policy of moving from a hospital-centered to a home and community care model in Singapore, the re-activating of places in older communities with social and cultural activities and a more inclusive design is therefore highly essential. It includes thoughtful home designs, elder-friendly buildings, and public spaces, as well as green spaces for leisure, therapeutic and community activities. In land scarce Singapore, architects and designers will have to be creative in coming up with innovative solutions to meet the needs of an aging population.
Cultural Heritage
The cultural heritage of a nation includes both the tangible and intangible. The awareness and increased interest among Singaporeans in the city-state's history and cultural heritage are no doubt spurred on by the SG 50 celebration. Continuing from this laudable effort, Singapore identified 50 intangible cultural heritage elements as a step towards inclusion in UNESCO’s intangible cultural heritage list in April 2018. In 2011, the National Heritage Board produced a concise and well-researched publication titled Balestier. A Heritage Trail, which highlighted the broad architectural, social and cultural history of the area. Less attention, however, was focused on the intimate, personal history of longtime Whampoa residents, many who have lived there for over 40 years. For them, sharing their life stories- memories of growing up, getting married, raising a family in Whampoa and seeing its continuing transformation adds to the multicultural history and identity of the neighborhood. Equally important, the process of reminiscing provides a moment to take stock of their lives, find meaning and impart values to the next generation.
Living Museum
When viewed from the aforementioned perspectives, the Living Museum initiative in the National Heritage Board (NHB) supported Curating Whampoa project is an important and timely one. The project is co-conceptualized by the Tsao Foundation and Thomas Kong, a Singapore-licensed architect and an Associate Professor from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
The Living Museum collects, interprets and presents the diverse social life and rich intangible cultural heritage of Whampoa through the participation of residents, artists, designers, students and community-based workers in a series of thematic events. A variety of media and presentation platforms showcases the collaborative efforts of the participants. The Living Museum offers a broad, bottom-up and inclusive insight into a changing neighborhood that goes beyond the repository of objects within a building. It presents an alternative museum experience and displays that is people-centered, co-curated and reflects the memories, hopes, and values of Whampoa older residents. The Living Museum complements the mission of Tsao Foundation's Community for Successful Aging Whampoa (ComSA Whampoa), which seeks to provide effective bio- and psychosocial health care for the elders, and to fulfill their aspiration to age in place.
Methodology
Traditional functions in a museum such as curatorial, education, exhibition, and archival, are re-interpreted through the Living Museum. By re-contextualizing the functions, the method opens up unique opportunities for re-defining the role, purpose, and meaning of a museum in an aging community.
Curatorial
Traditional curatorial practice is often situated within the confines of a museum, led by a professionally trained curator, and is generally concerned with a specific collection. On the other hand, the popularity of Pinterest, for example, has spurred a new generation of grassroots curators for a wide range of topics and images. The Living Museum's bottom-up approach involves a much broader context than a traditional museum setting. The expanded curatorial strategy seeks a diversified and related field of everyday objects, people, spaces, and activities.
Education
Contemporary museums are actively engaging its audience through educational activities organized around its collection. Although the museum space engenders an informal learning environment, it remains within an institutional setting shaped by a formal education program. The education mission of the Living Museum is simultaneously narrower and broader and is more informal. It is centered around the topic of aging in place but includes capacity building among the elders. A learning moment happens when the elders re-tell the story of an artifact in their homes or during the exhibition. It occurs when secondary school students collaborate in preparing a dish based on a favorite recipe of the elders. It is also capacity building when the elders are taught how to use photography to share their favorite places in Whampoa or when they are exposed to the basic skills of curating.
Exhibition
Unlike a traditional museum or the community museum in Taman Jurong, the Living Museum does not have a permanent space in Whampoa. It is more like a pop-up installation at different locations chosen strategically to meet the exhibition objectives. The display of objects and collections curated for the Living Museum is temporary and distributed over the Whampoa neighborhood. The transient and mobile nature of the presentation takes into consideration the opportunity to reach out to a broader audience, both young and older within a short space of time and the modest budget for design and exhibition. Simplicity, modularity of parts for ease of transportation, setting-up, and durability of the public displays are critical considerations. Public areas below the flats, along a popular route, in a pavilion, at the food center, the forecourt of the Whampoa Community Club and the gallery of a secondary art school are some of the exhibition spaces. Besides sharing their collections, the elder participants are also involved in other ways, such as their written reflections of their favorite recipes and as docents to explain the collections and ideas behind the exhibits to the audience.
Archival
A museum can only display a small portion of its collection at any one time. The rest are carefully archived and kept in storage. While working on the Tangible Stories project, Associate Professor Thomas Kong created the concept of Social Archiving for the Living Museum. It explores a new form of archiving that combines curating, gift-giving, safekeeping, leaving of a personal legacy, placemaking and a renewal of the life of a collection through an in-person ritual and a digital interface for sustaining the social life of the collection locally and beyond. The concept is particularly pertinent in Singapore's aging society. Elder residents often have a rich and diverse collection of artifacts and ephemera but are forced to sell or discard them when they moved to a smaller studio apartment or if they have no one to pass on the collection. Social archiving also offers a more intimate platform for intergenerational learning and legacy building through the sharing of the stories related to the archived materials. Moreover, the sense of place, identify, and belonging can be promoted through social archiving. The provision of spaces for the display of and the holding of community events to give and share the collections can help to anchor and transform personal memories of Whampoa into a collective one nationally in a small nation-state like Singapore.
Conclusion
The Living Museum is an experimental and interdisciplinary initiative that lies at the intersection of aging, health, art, cultural heritage, and place. It is experimental because it strives to forge a new approach to the topic of aging in place among Whampoa residents, public health policymakers, community, and cultural workers, as well creative practitioners through the works and conversations generated over the two-year period. It is also messy and not easily categorized by nature of its interdisciplinary focus. Given the multiple issues surrounding aging in place, an interdisciplinary approach helps to identify convergences and intersections among the different disciplines and stakeholders. It opens up new initiatives, productive collaborations, fresh ideas, and learning opportunities that may otherwise lie within the purview of a single discipline or group.