Constructing habitus: promoting an international arts trend at the Singapore Arts Festival

The Singapore Arts Festival (SAF) is Singapore’s largest government-supported international arts festival. SAF presents the best in international and local arts, in an attempt, to develop what it perceives to be a lack of cultural knowledge of the Singaporean arts-going public. Using Pierre Bourdieu’s key concept of ‘habitus’ together with an analysis of the programming of the festival, this paper will highlight how the festival seeks to create a specific cultural taste in Singaporean art-goers through privileging and promoting works that are internationally marketable to European countries. The paper will conclude that this programming style occurs at the expense of Singaporean artists and hinders the development of the city’s state cultural and artistic development