Dummy’s guide + Preview of Singapore Night Festival 2019
You can get all the info you need about this year’s Night Fest from: https://www.nightfestival.sg. Other than a Dummy’s guide, this post will be LSQ’s preview of the Singapore Night Festival 2019, based on my experience with previous editions, and focusing on what I personally enjoy.
A Dummy’s guide to the Singapore Night Festival
If you’re new to the Singapore Night Festival, you may be a little overwhelmed by the website and its overdose of info about all the happenings at Night Fest.
Don’t be. I’ll try my best to break the entire Night Fest down into chunks so you have a better picture.
What is Night Fest?
The Singapore Night Festival is an annual street festival held over two weekends to showcase and celebrate Singapore’s vibrant arts and cultural scene. There will be light installations or projections in public spaces, street performances, dance performances, free extended hours entry into museums, poetry readings, film screenings, talks, wrestling shows, etc etc. I hope you get the drift now.
When is Night Fest?
The Singapore Night Festival 2019 will take place from 23rd – 31st Aug, 2019, with main activities happening over the 2 weekends, from 7.30pm – 12mn.
For detailed the detailed programme with schedule and respective venues, I highly recommend you download the Festival brochure (physical copies will usually be given out at various locations during the Night Fest).
Where is Night Fest?
Every year, Night Fest will be split into 5 zones that span across the cultural districts of Bugis and Bras Basah, basically areas around City Hall MRT, Bugis MRT, Bras Basah MRT, and Dhoby Ghaut MRT, including SMU and Fort Canning Park. These include museums in the zone: National Museum, Singapore Art Museum, Peranakan Museum, and Philatelic Museum; which will have extended opening hours (usually till midnight) and free entry.
Again, super useful to have a copy of the Festival brochure on hand (as mentioned above, you can get this from volunteers during the Night Fest.)
So many things, where to start?
Ok so this is the part where I will shift the focus to things I personally enjoy, rather than the headline acts or Festival Highlights like this.
For starters, I’ll usually set aside at least 1 day per weekend to attend Night Fest, and focus each weekend on 1-3 zones so I won’t have to rush or stress myself out with trying to cover all 5 zones in 1 evening.
This will be my 6th year attending Night Fest and I find this ‘strategy’ works best for me.
Note: you can easily consult the Festival brochure for detailed listing of things to see/do at each of the zones, which are conveniently colour coded to help you plan.
LSQ’s picks for Night Fest 2019
For 2019’s edition, this is my plan / schedule:
25th August Sunday
Zone 1 (National Museum of Singapore) – 2 major Night Lights here: Keep Dreaming and The Legend of Ramayana. There will be also extended opening hours at the Museum till 10pm (last entry at 9pm) for the following: Stamford Gallery, Singapore History Gallery and The Future is Today installation – the last one being the one I’ll mainly be there for cos Intergalactic Dreams by Jahan Loh ~~~
Zone 2 (Armenian Street Park & Chijmes) – Just gonna be walking down Stamford Road area quickly to see the Night Lights.
Zone 3 (Campus Green within SMU) – Mainly because of its proximity to Zones 1 & 2, and also a rather small and concentrated area to catch 9 items here, including 4 Night Lights.
30th August Friday
Zone 2 (National Archives of Singapore)
Just one event for this day cos work day, and I’ve to rush home to feed the cat right after: Remembrances: People, Places, Events –
Specially curated by the National Archives of Singapore, these home movies from the 1930s to 1970s present personal portraits of people, places and experiences, interspersed with snippets of community and national events that showcase the different facets of the everyday lives of Singaporeans.
Also, to step into the rather new Oldham Theatre at the National Archives of Singapore for the first time, and for free :]
31st August Saturday
Zone 4 (Centre 42 at Waterloo Street + NLB)
This is the day I look forward to most on this year’s calendar of events cos Late Night Texting at Centre 42! This is an annual highlight of Night Fest for me because the focus is on text-based works such as poetry and plays by indie local artists. I appreciate many kinds of art in general, but in particular, the written word is my favourite genre.
Anyway, Late Night Texting’s got its own website and you can check out the full schedule here: http://centre42.sg/lnt2019/
It runs 30th – 31st Aug (Fri – Sat), 7pm – 11:30pm, but I’ll be going on Saturday because I want to attend everything!!!!!!
So my plan is to have an early dinner, and then attend every single program from 7pm all the way till 11:30pm hahaha.
Check out their very pretty schedule, where at a glance you know what events are happening simultaneously and you can easily plan your ‘route’, especially for people like me who want to cover everything!
Before I wipe clean……..
I really adore the Night Fest because it’s the one time in a year whereby I truly feel that Singapore is such a vibrant and culturally-rich country cos everything artsy comes alive, and things actually open till late for once!
The Singapore Night Festival has something for everyone. Even if you’re clueless about the arts, you can choose to go with the flow (eg, alight at Bras Basah station and see where the crowd or lights take you); or if like me and there’s a particular genre you like, just focus on that area and immerse in the activities / events. Regardless, you will definitely have fun and come out of the Night Fest feeling enriched or at least entertained. Plus don’t forget, most of the stuff on the Programme are free!!!!!!
So see you there xoxo