Paint sculptures and learn about Punggol's history at new 10-day arts and heritage festival
Paint sculptures and learn about Punggol's history at new 10-day arts and heritage festival
SINGAPORE – Within the Waterway Point mall in Punggol is a cluster of boulder-like sculptures sporting paint-splattered handprints and brushstrokes.
Made of canvas, the sculptures are part of an interactive art installation meant to represent Punggol's rocky shoreline. Punggol residents and their children can draw and paint on them as part of an experience to reimagine what is a central part of their neighbourhood.
The installation, called Colours on Shore, is part of a new heritage initiative that will run from June 6 to 15 in Punggol.
It is being launched under the National Heritage Board's (NHB) Heritage Activation Node (HAN) initiative, which aims to involve the public and local communities in celebrating the heritage of Singapore's neighbourhoods and organising their own heritage programmes.
Punggol is the third town where this initiative has been launched, after similar runs in Katong-Joo Chiat and Clementi in 2024.
The Punggol initiative's curator John Tung said the Punggol area was once known for its pig farms and for housing Singapore's first zoo, although the town's identity has evolved, and residents have different interpretations of the town now.
'There is a part of Punggol that is historical, for example the changing history of Punggol Beach, but it's no longer a fishermen's block anymore,' said Mr Tung.
Once a rural fishing village with poultry and pig farms, Punggol began clearing out its pig farms in the 1980s. Construction of the first Housing Board flats began in the late 1990s.
Other heritage programmes being organised in Punggol as part of this initiative, include one called 'Where Punggol Meets Plate', which allows participants to create a three-course food experience using local ingredients such as Nipah palm trees near Punggol Reservoir.
There is also a listening and drawing workshop called 'Attuning to Nature' that will allow participants to learn about the natural and environmental histories of Punggol and Coney Island.
These programmes are co-organised with over 10 community partners, and in partnership with art organization OH! Open House.
Interested participants can sign up at: go.gov.sg/han-whats-on.
NHB's director for education and community outreach, Mr Gerald Wee, hopes the initiative will bring Punggol's history to life, and highlight natural spaces like Coney Island, as well as landmarks such as Punggol Jetty and Punggol Settlement.
Mr Wee said previous launches of the initiative have drawn good feedback and 'brought together diverse communities to uncover and share neighbourhood stories'.
'As we launch HAN@Punggol with OH! Open House, we look forward to expanding this vibrant community of heritage enthusiasts, and deepening connections between communities and their neighbourhood's heritage,' he said.
Ms Chua Sze Hwei, 37, a full-time homemaker who has lived in Punggol for about a decade, is looking forward to the heritage programmes.
'I think it would be great if the initiatives can attract people to see how young and how vibrant the community is in Punggol,' she said.
Children trying their hand at the interactive art experience called Colours on Shore, at Waterway Point on June 6.
ST PHOTO: CHONG JUN LIANG
OH! Open House and NHB also plan to go further with the initiative. In July, they intend to mobilise volunteers to go door-to-door around Punggol to invite households to have their portraits drawn and gather stories about their neighbourhood.
This will be part of a three-year community initiative to create a directory of local stories that can be displayed in Punggol's public spaces.
OH! Open House artistic director, Mr Alan Oei, added: 'Heritage isn't just something we visit in a museum - it's in the stories passed down at void decks, in the everyday rituals we don't even realise we're part of.'
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Straits Times
4 days ago
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Mr Tan's students from Commonwealth Secondary School visited the island under the Ubin School initiative, launched in 2024 to provide experiential learning and environmental education there. It was one of the initiatives highlighted by Education Minister Desmond Lee at the annual Ubin Day celebrations on June 28, along with infrastructure improvements, a new workgroup to restore five vacant kampung houses, and updates on a species recovery effort. A workgroup under the Friends of Ubin Network (Fun) – a group of villagers, academics and nature and heritage enthusiasts established in 2014 – will be set up to guide the planned restoration of five vacant kampung houses, said Mr Lee. The workgroup will comprise Fun and kampung community members, as well as academics from fields such as built heritage and culture. It was announced a year ago that the five houses would be repurposed for community and commercial use. 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Ng Keng Gene is a correspondent at The Straits Times, reporting on issues relating to land use, urban planning and heritage. Join ST's WhatsApp Channel and get the latest news and must-reads.
CNA
5 days ago
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Installing grilles, keeping trash covered: Punggol residents find ways to keep nuisance monkeys at bay
Madam Chew Cheow Tee, 72, has yet to move into her new Punggol apartment at block 442B Punggol Point Cove but she has already requested a contractor to install monkey-proof grilles as a precaution. 'I watched videos and the news about monkeys climbing the buildings. I found them very scary and am afraid that monkeys could come in to steal my food if I just leave them on the table, then it would already be too late,' she said. So prevalent is the wild monkey problem in the Punggol area, that residents like Mdm Chew who have yet to move in are prepping themselves to deal with these creatures. Meanwhile, residents who are already in the thick of things have started banding together to keep each other updated on monkey business in their neighbourhood. Over at the blocks at Waterway Sunrise near Punggol Drive, when a resident spots a long-tailed macaque scaling the walls of a block, they take a photo and circulate it with an alert on a Telegram chatgroup. 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Ms Delfino added that this comes at a cost to the restaurant and inconveniences the employees who have to clean up the mess. The National Parks Board (NParks) said that from January to May this year, they received 280 feedback cases related to macaques in Punggol, which is more than twice the number of reports received for the whole of last year. The feedback they received included include sightings, intrusions into homes and rummaging of rubbish bins. MINIMISING DAMAGE To minimise the damage caused by these creatures, more residents are turning to protective barriers. Window grilles company, Diamond Grille Systems, for example said that requests for their monkey-proof design have increased by three to four times since the start of 2025. While the company did not give details on how many orders it received, it said it saw particularly large demand from residents at Punggol Point Cove, a new estate, as homeowners started to collect their keys to their completed build-to-order flats from January 2024. Mr Javen Tan, 44, general manager of Diamond Grille Systems, said: 'Three years ago, our company already forecasted this problem. We knew there were issues at Punggol Northshore, as well as at the Punggol settlement area. 'So at that time, we did research and development at Coney Island to understand the characteristics of monkeys to identify what type of application can physically keep them off.' The wires of their grilles are vertical instead of horizontal, resembling the design of cages in zoos, which means that there is less chance of the monkeys climbing and hanging off the grilles. 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Over the last decade, other monkey hotspots included Segar Road in Bukit Panjang and areas near the MacRitchie Nature Reserve, such as private estates in Bukit Timah and Upper Thomson Road. Residents in some of these areas continue to deal with monkeys daily. Licensed cat breeder Christopher Choy, 39, who lives in Upper Bukit Timah, said that he has encountered troops of macaques during his morning walks and sometimes they raid his backyard trees for fruit. 'My neighbours have complained and put up anti-monkey netting at their windows, fruit trees and ponds to stop them from entering the house. They also set up ultrasonic monkey repellent devices in the backyard to deter them,' said Mr Choy. A search by CNA TODAY on the e-commerce platform Shopee found advertisements of these devices labelled with promises in bold like 'No monkeys for 100 years!' on sale for about S$16 to S$22. Member of Parliament for Bukit Panjang SMC, Mr Liang Eng Hwa, who oversaw an incident in 2017 where monkeys were harassing residents at Segar said that he had a town hall to discuss the matter with affected residents then. Segar Residents' Committee helped to set up a WhatsApp chat group with Mr Liang and the residents to report appearances of the monkey. The issue was then resolved in two to three weeks after the monkeys were captured. 'We wanted to be responsive. And then whenever someone sighted a monkey, Acres would be able to go there quickly,' he said. He highlighted that Singapore has a couple of housing estates 'right at the doorstep' of nature reserves, which is the case for his ward Bukit Panjang, so it is natural that residents have to learn to coexist with them. 'There will be some of this wildlife that will come out from time to time. Some of them are transient, they come and then they leave. But let's say they stay around, and they start to go into homes, then we alert NParks,' he said. ONE PERSON'S ACTIONS CAN WRECK HAVOC FOR A WHOLE BLOCK Dr Andie Ang, who is head of primate conservation and Singapore programmes at Mandai Nature, said feeding wildlife is partly to blame for monkey home invasions and that all it takes is one person to wreak havoc on a whole block. The primatologist said that if a resident flings rice grains from a window to feed pigeons, for example, other wildlife, including monkeys, would climb towards that unit when they see food coming out. 'It's not just one monkey, but a troop. The alpha might go to the place that throws the food out, but the rest can then explore the neighbouring units. 'That's when the neighbours can complain and say 'I didn't do anything but the monkeys came to my house', not knowing that people around them might be doing things that they shouldn't be doing and so that is collateral damage to the rest,' said Dr Ang. She also said that rubbish bins that are not monkey-proof are like 'free vending machines' that are always there, consistently providing food and leading to 'unintentional feeding'. Overall, she said that there is a lack of awareness about the consequences of feeding wildlife. This means that 'a lot of education' needs to be put into place. She added that when people feed monkeys, they are giving the creatures "extra resources" outside of their natural habitat. As a result, they reproduce at a faster rate than their environment can support and they also lose their natural fear of humans and start to approach humans more. She has seen families giving food to crows, pigeons and turtles, which in turn attracts monkeys. She said that parents believe this is a way for their children to interact with wildlife. 'When we talk to some parents about how we shouldn't be feeding, the parents said, 'oh, it's just vegetables, it's natural food, it's not biscuits'. They don't understand that it's not about what you feed, it's the feeding itself.'
Straits Times
06-06-2025
- Straits Times
Paint sculptures and learn about Punggol's history at new 10-day arts and heritage festival
The installation, called Colours on Shore, is part of a new heritage initiative that will run from June 6 to 15 in Punggol. ST PHOTO: CHONG JUN LIANG Paint sculptures and learn about Punggol's history at new 10-day arts and heritage festival SINGAPORE – Within the Waterway Point mall in Punggol is a cluster of boulder-like sculptures sporting paint-splattered handprints and brushstrokes. Made of canvas, the sculptures are part of an interactive art installation meant to represent Punggol's rocky shoreline. Punggol residents and their children can draw and paint on them as part of an experience to reimagine what is a central part of their neighbourhood. The installation, called Colours on Shore, is part of a new heritage initiative that will run from June 6 to 15 in Punggol. It is being launched under the National Heritage Board's (NHB) Heritage Activation Node (HAN) initiative, which aims to involve the public and local communities in celebrating the heritage of Singapore's neighbourhoods and organising their own heritage programmes. Punggol is the third town where this initiative has been launched, after similar runs in Katong-Joo Chiat and Clementi in 2024. The Punggol initiative's curator John Tung said the Punggol area was once known for its pig farms and for housing Singapore's first zoo, although the town's identity has evolved, and residents have different interpretations of the town now. 'There is a part of Punggol that is historical, for example the changing history of Punggol Beach, but it's no longer a fishermen's block anymore,' said Mr Tung. Once a rural fishing village with poultry and pig farms, Punggol began clearing out its pig farms in the 1980s. Construction of the first Housing Board flats began in the late 1990s. Other heritage programmes being organised in Punggol as part of this initiative, include one called 'Where Punggol Meets Plate', which allows participants to create a three-course food experience using local ingredients such as Nipah palm trees near Punggol Reservoir. There is also a listening and drawing workshop called 'Attuning to Nature' that will allow participants to learn about the natural and environmental histories of Punggol and Coney Island. These programmes are co-organised with over 10 community partners, and in partnership with art organization OH! Open House. Interested participants can sign up at: NHB's director for education and community outreach, Mr Gerald Wee, hopes the initiative will bring Punggol's history to life, and highlight natural spaces like Coney Island, as well as landmarks such as Punggol Jetty and Punggol Settlement. Mr Wee said previous launches of the initiative have drawn good feedback and 'brought together diverse communities to uncover and share neighbourhood stories'. 'As we launch HAN@Punggol with OH! Open House, we look forward to expanding this vibrant community of heritage enthusiasts, and deepening connections between communities and their neighbourhood's heritage,' he said. Ms Chua Sze Hwei, 37, a full-time homemaker who has lived in Punggol for about a decade, is looking forward to the heritage programmes. 'I think it would be great if the initiatives can attract people to see how young and how vibrant the community is in Punggol,' she said. Children trying their hand at the interactive art experience called Colours on Shore, at Waterway Point on June 6. ST PHOTO: CHONG JUN LIANG OH! Open House and NHB also plan to go further with the initiative. In July, they intend to mobilise volunteers to go door-to-door around Punggol to invite households to have their portraits drawn and gather stories about their neighbourhood. This will be part of a three-year community initiative to create a directory of local stories that can be displayed in Punggol's public spaces. OH! Open House artistic director, Mr Alan Oei, added: 'Heritage isn't just something we visit in a museum - it's in the stories passed down at void decks, in the everyday rituals we don't even realise we're part of.' Join ST's WhatsApp Channel and get the latest news and must-reads.
