Alvin Tan
National Heritage Board, Singapore
Like many countries around the world, Singapore faces the issues of an ageing population and rising life expectancy. Since the establishment of the National Heritage Board (NHB) in 1993, Singapore’s museums and heritage institutions have always been positioned as social and inclusive spaces that welcome and facilitate mixing across different age groups, while offering programmes that cater to these different age groups. However, museum policies and programmes that specifically target senior citizens have always been ad hoc and piecemeal in nature. With the recent launch of Our SG Heritage Plan, NHB hopes to address this gap by creating a silver generation framework that comprises a suite of age-friendly initiatives that will be developed and implemented in phases from 2018 to 2022. Some of these initiatives include conducting an accessibility audit of our museums and their facilities; leveraging our National Collection and heritage materials to create learning resources for senior citizens; and transforming our three heritage institutions into “Silver Hubs” for senior citizens.
This presentation will showcase NHB’s silver generation framework, its strategies and its age-friendly initiatives. The presentation will also offer insights into the challenges of developing museum policies and programmes for senior citizens and the benefits of engaging senior citizens, as well as the learning points gleamed from developing the framework and implementing its initiatives.
(Presented in the 2018 Chulalongkorn Asian Heritage Forum : Culture of Longevity, 15-16 August 2018, Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Bangkok, organized by Institute of Thai Studies, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, College of Population Studies, Chulalongkorn University)