With Singapore hosting a number of major events in the near future, it may be worthwhile to pay attention to our skills and attitudes towards successful event management.
I suspect that currently, we are both careless and callous in public event management.
Recently a Forum article in the Straits Times commented on the poor crowd control and ushering at the recent ChingGay Festival. There was also a mess in the bus queues at the tow public days for recent Changi AirShow. All these events generally go unreported by the Press that wildly glorifies the richness of the event.
Last Friday I attended the Braddell Heights community Yuan Xiao Chinese New Year festival. The performance were excellent for a community event but I was exceedingly troubled by various aspects of the organization.
1. The event was held on 22 Feb. Chinese new Year ended on 21st and the right day to celebrate Yuan Xiao is the 21st, and its inappropriate and careless to celebrate this on any other day.
2. The guest of honour, MP Seah arrived late. To make matters worse his arrival was heralded by a noisy lion dance which cut right into the performance by the Braddell Heights Malay Dance Group. The poor performers who must have practised hard for the event saw their audience totally distracted. It was certainly a washout for them. They were given no apologies, no acknowlegements ...just totally overshadowed and cast aside. A significant portion of the Malays in the audience left unnoticed. Hopefully these were the friends and parents of the performers who were leaving to help the dancer pack up and not people in protest.
3. There were some performances by other ethnic groups and it was announced by the MC that these groups like to join the chinese in their celebrations. I would have thought they would be given guest and special status...instead their events were used as fillers prior to the arrival of the guest of honour which apparently was to the organisers the highlight of their event.
4. There were various fringe events which was an interesting idea. However no one really tested the volumes of the mike to ensure that they did not disturb the main performance.
5. The audience took a long time to settle down. This was due to a weak Master of Ceremony and poor programming. A stronger item at the beginning would have settled people down quickly.
Whilst one could easily make an excuse that this a community/village event....it does show an overall lack of quality consciousness especially compared to many village celebratiosn I have attended in Germany and Japan.
Singaporeans must improve themselves and be better organisers and audiences if we are to make a good show of the big events coming in the future.
