National Heritage Board launches new initiative to raise cultural awareness

The National Heritage Board’s (NHB) new education initiative know as Heritage Explorers will enable primary school students to adopt different heritage professions such as curators, historians, designers, educators and ambassadors and will enable them to have first-hand experiences.

NHB has launched the programme at 20 other primary schools in March 2016. Schools which are interested to participate in the programme’s second run can register via nhb_educationprogrammes@nhb.gov.sg, from now till 22 April 2016.

The 20 schools that have been selected.

The Heritage Explorers programme was first started in partnership with Punggol Green Primary and West View Primary in July 2015, and was well-received by the Primary 2, 3 and 4 students of the schools.

Charissa Khor, 8, a Primary 3 pupil at West View Primary said, “I enjoyed taking part in the Heritage Explorers Programme, and found the tasks, while challenging, still very fun and interesting. It also gave me more chances to interact with my family, friends, and even my neighbours. After taking on the tasks, I have discovered amazing things about our heritage!”

Alvin Tan, Assistant CE (Policy & Community) of NHB tells us more about what outcome he hopes to achieve from this initiative, “The programme seeks to encourage Primary School students to learn more about Singapore’s heritage through self-directed activities beyond the classroom”.

“Through the programme, we hope to ignite the spark of interest in heritage amongst students, instil an appreciation of the value of heritage from young, and in doing so, groom the next generation of heritage champions”.

When asked what his future plans in getting more students to immerse in our heritage were, he said, “NHB has introduced a suite of other heritage offerings including pre-school travelling kits, school heritage corners, school-adopted heritage trails, trips to our museums and monuments as well as the Heritage Badge scheme for uniform groups in Secondary Schools”.

“Our museums and heritage institutions are also partnering schools to train students into museum guides, and NHB works with students from different schools to co-develop research and content, as well as to co-curate exhibitions and programmes on an ongoing basis”.

So parents, your child may have the opportunity to learn more about Singapore’s rich heritage through these new initiatives being introduced to them, and will get to have hands on experiences! We can’t wait to see how well this program is going to go!