I'm going to start this post by venting out my frustration with the lack of books/literature related events in Malaysia. The Asian Festival of Children's Content is a yearly event organized by National Book Development Council of Singapore and attracted nearly 6,000 participants from around the world! The NBDCS' calender of upcoming events is full of almost daily trainings, workshops, meetings, club meets, as well as international events every quarter of the year. Singapore's size and population is a whole lot smaller than us but how come their industry is sooooo active?
I suppose like every other social work in this country, we can't rely on "those who have the power and money" to initiate anything. We should rally up as individuals or NGOs then only we can have things done. Will (personally) work on this in the near future....
Back to my experience attending the AFCC 2014... The event was mainly held at Singapore's National Library. A beautiful, iconic building designed by Malaysian architects (pointing that out to show that Malaysia is not bad either ;p). The library is spacious and green and gives amazing view of the city from their Pod on the 16th floor and would take a whole other blog post to describe it's awesome-ness.
The 5 day event hosted around 100 speakers from 16 different countries and offered 85 talks and six masterclasses at the main venue. Then there was three other libraries across the city-state which served as venues for programs in mother tongue languages: Chinese, Malay and Tamil. So throughout the event, there are 2-3 talks going on at the same time in different places and they are all discussing topics that really interest me so I had a heart-breaking time choosing which ones to go to.
Here's a list of what I've learned/observed during the AFCC 2014:
1. Bilinguality is huge
I believe the Singaporeans have quite the opposite problem from ours... While we are mainly using Malay/Chinese/Tamil in our daily life as well as at school and eager to learn more English, they have been using too much English that the focus now is to get back to mastering their own mother tongue which are Chinese, Malay and Tamil. But I suppose both Singapore and Malaysia advocate the necessity of being bilingual and that's where I see a business prospect in the sense that we could develop more books in dual language to penetrate Singapore's market.
2. Being proud of my own culture and local stories
I am so amazed at how the people from the book industry from all over Asia are really embracing their roots and want to produce more books in their local language which portray their native culture. I feel kind of embarrassed than I am so westernized that I don't have that much passion in promoting Malaysian books and stories.
At the moment, the Singaporean has this beautiful project of collecting and documenting stories of their country to promote unity among the people. And to encourage people to contribute their memories, they had commissioned one of their successful graphic novelist, Adeline Foo, to come up with a book project for primary students encouraging them to find their own answers to what makes them Singaporean called the The Awesome MRT Diaries. Totally brilliant effort!
Then there is the Scholastic Asian Book Award. An international award promoting Asians to write more about their own country and culture. This would be something I would like to dip my legs into. I bought a couple of the award winning books and I think the idea is simple enough for me to work on.
At the moment, the Singaporean has this beautiful project of collecting and documenting stories of their country to promote unity among the people. And to encourage people to contribute their memories, they had commissioned one of their successful graphic novelist, Adeline Foo, to come up with a book project for primary students encouraging them to find their own answers to what makes them Singaporean called the The Awesome MRT Diaries. Totally brilliant effort!
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| What the book project is all about. |
Then there is the Scholastic Asian Book Award. An international award promoting Asians to write more about their own country and culture. This would be something I would like to dip my legs into. I bought a couple of the award winning books and I think the idea is simple enough for me to work on.
3. Storyteller is a profession? I.did.not.know.that
They are like actors or singers... performers really. Turned out there are so many of them in Singapore and this is an established profession, not something they did as a part-time job. In fact, they play such an important part in literacy that the NBDCS also hosts Singapore International Story Telling Festival every year.
4. The culture of books/literature/education among Singaporeans
They have grants and funds for bilingual books such as the Lee Kuan Yew Fund for Bilingualism. They create books to promote Singaporean culture and their government support the effort by promoting their works... It is hard for writers and illustrators to make real money in this world and their authorities recognized that.
And when I came early for the event on a Sunday morning, there are high school students doing group discussion around the library's ground. Unbelievable isn't it? It was SUNDAY!
The island also have quite a number of independent book stores run by small businesses catering to specific market. You would think that with a small population, niche businesses wouldn't make much money but they are doing rather well over there. In fact, on of them, Woods in the Books which specializes in picture books, was the official book at the AFCC 2014.
5. Volunteering
The AFCC ran mostly on volunteers. There are many them running here and there making sure the mics are on and guiding the participants to the rooms they want to go to etc. There are volunteers helping to run the library itself. I haven't seen this passion to help-without-asking-anything-back since I left Japan.
Phewwh! This one event taught me soo much, I'm definitely coming back next year! :)
