A Fading Tradition: Design as a Portal to the Discovery of one's Own Cultural Heritage

Abstract

In most industrialized nations, the journey from third to first world replaces an old way of life with a new one. Throughout this transition, substantial physical, social and economic changes occur, often resulting in a disintegration of cultural traditions. This is especially true in Singapore, where this transition has taken place in a highly compressed timeframe, resulting in three generations of Singaporeans living in and perceiving three vastly different Singapores, and leaving the youngest struggling to understand their cultural heritage.

This paper presents A Fading Tradition, a project that aims to engage this youngest generation in the discovery of their cultural heritage from within by expressing it without.

In this project, students select a fading tradition (an art form, craft, way of life, food, music, celebration or anything else that is disappearing) and strive to give it relevance in today's Singaporean society by designing a way to present it to contemporary culture. After undertaking extensive research into the tradition and why it is fading, including identifying and shadowing an expert in the tradition, students define their contemporary local audience and develop a design direction.

Students are then given an additional challenge, to design a way to present this same tradition to another audience, the foreigner, to connect this local tradition to a global audience. After surveying people from their two target audiences, students must look at the tradition from both an insider's and outsider's point of view, consider the cultural differences between the two audiences, analyze their audiences' previous knowledge and exposure to the tradition, and determine distinct approaches for each design solution. The efficacy of these solutions are ultimately tested and determined by their presentation to both local and foreign critics.

This paper documents the process, results and insights gained by this project, undertaken by 74 second-year undergraduate Visual Communication students over the last two years.

Key Words:

• Communication design
• Singapore
• cultural identity
• fading traditions