The home of literary arts in Singapore, The Arts House, bridges arts and audiences by transforming ideas into reality through its distinctive spaces and programmes. With a vision to be a leader to nurture, inspire, and enrich communities through the arts, the house decided to launch its “The Arts House’s Textures 2021: The Bottled City” installation.
Growing up in Singapore has left most citizens with little to no time to appreciate the beauty of topics such as literature, says The Arts House. But The Bottled City exhibition presented opportunities for citizens to be curious, to explore, or have an adventure with Singapore’s literature.
This exhibition impressed the judges, which earned The Arts House the silver award for Best Event On a Budget at MARKETING-INTERACTIVE’s Marketing Events Awards 2021.
Challenge
Annually, The Arts House is known for hosting its “Textures” event which is catered especially to bookworms; celebrating and appreciating the scramble of 26 letters forming into words that evoke a reader’s emotions.
For this year’s “Textures 2021” event, The Arts House took the theme of “The Bottled City”. The theme came from an inspiration where people were faced with the restrictions from the pandemic, but found opportunities that offered curiosity, exploration, and adventure through Singapore’s literature. According to The Arts House, this initiative aimed to bring arts closer to the people.
Strategy
Aiming to celebrate Singapore’s literature scene, The Arts House decided to extend this event beyond the weekends to different heartlands in the country for a month, hoping to reach out to new readers and advocates.
Now with a goal in mind, The Arts House was left with another challenge on how to bring arts to the heartlands of Singapore in a budget. To combat this challenge, The Arts House worked with brand activation agency INX, to convert its unique series of Mobile Activation Vehicle (MAV) into a roving arts installation and reading room.
The MAV, designed by INX, is a modular and fully customisable mobile platform that is designed to tailor and adapt to marketing and brand activation event requirements from the ground up, enabling a myriad of concepts and possibilities for any brand that is looking to amplify brand recognition with an engaging and interactive platform.
Execution
The concept, “Library on wheels” was developed to make transporting the arts to Singapore’s various heartlands easier. When relocating the arts, The Arts House and INX decided on utilising a truck that could be easily set up or dismantled.
According to The Arts House, this helped in reducing production waste by using bulk carpentry items, as well as presenting literature in a different way to reach new audiences.
The MAV also had a hydraulic tailgate to accommodate wheelchair users. Because of the truck’s compact space, The Arts House and INX could easily regulate the crowd flow while still adhering to the SMM rules and regulations.
The tight space was able to fit around 60 to 70 books, and art pieces. With both a mobile installation and a portable bookshelf, The Bottled City art installation was able to make its way across areas such as Jurong, Yishun, Toa Payoh, and Enabling Village.
Results
Overall, the event was able to garner positive results, with a resident from Yishun saying the event exceeded expectations as one would not expect any sort of exhibition in a town that was “notorious for cat killing and the occasional murder”.
“You would not expect any cultural experience to rank high on the list of places to go in Yishun, which was why I was pleasantly surprised to hear that SAFRA Yishun was a pit stop for The Arts House’s Textures 2021: The Bottled City installation,” said the resident.