The AGEncy Fund believes in ageing well and with agency.
Set up and supported by T:>Works, The AGEncy Fund Open Call is an enabling platform to provide vital project grants for 60+ individuals and their intergenerational collaborators.
These six selected projects will receive a total of S$40,000 in funding from The AGEncy Fund, made possible by donations from the public. Together, these projects explore ageing in connection with community and life, while championing a future where creativity knows no age. Please join us in celebrating these selected project applicants – some have been working tirelessly in the local scene for decades, steadily shaping the local cultural landscape while others are emerging with fresh and urgent perspectives on wellness and ageing.
We are especially heartened to see projects that bridge generations – like Natalia Tan, Marcus Lam, and Ernesto Valerio’s The Lives and Lines of Ernesto Valerio –and works that confront the realities of disability and ageing, like Dawn-joy Leong’s Lucy Like-a-Charm. These collaborations remind us why projects that break across silos matter.
We also thank our peer panel of 60+ Cultural Medallionists for their invaluable insights and generosity throughout this selection process: Amanda Heng, Jeremy Monteiro, Meira Chand, Dr. Ong Keng Sen, and Som Said.
Join us on AGEncy Day in 2027 to witness these AGEncy Fest intergenerational and transdisciplinary processes.
The following are the six projects that have been selected:
Three workshops bringing to the public the oft-forgotten, irretrievable heritage passed down between mother and daughter in Southeast Asia. The three performative and interactive workshops will present healing ethnobotany, birth into motherhood, and ancient embodied practices in holistic wellness. Participants will learn to make food, natural remedies, and exchange stories of childhood in a shared space of reflection, connection, and care.
The Fund provides a quantum of SGD8,000 to support the development and implementation of the three workshops
Core performance for a community festival in Bedok. Inspired by a citizen circle experience processing grief and loss, this first festival in Bedok will be the proof of concept for the festival to continue in different neighbourhoods around Singapore.
The Fund provides a quantum of SGD7,500 to support the development and implementation of the core performance and public sharings by the show’s creators and grief consultants.
A memoir-fantasy about an Autistic woman and a Greyhound dog, presented in multimedia and in an immersive, accessible showcase. Inspired by the artist’s late diagnosis of autism and journey towards self-hood, this narrative captures the life- affirming connection between the human and the more-than-human in a whimsical little princess story. The immersive set, inspired by Lucy the greyhound, is a conducive and dynamic space, serving to draw audiences deeper into the fantasia realm, through tactile, visual, audio, and olfactory sensory engagement.
The Fund provides a quantum of SGD6,500 to support the completion of the film, and the accompanying multimodal showcase, inclusive of the materials and interpreters-facilitators for the immersive set.
A film installation featuring a filmmaker performing for the first time in 15 years as a lonely insomniac in his sixties. Notably, the filmmaker is revisiting a creative exploration about sleep and mental wellness that he started in the 1990s – now with new eyes in his sixth decade. Central to the collaboration in this project will be an intergenerational mentoring process for young filmmakers and the film making community, as well as documentation remaining as educational resources.
The Fund provides a quantum of SGD9,000 to support the development and implementation of the multi-media installation, including the film component.
The Fund provides a quantum of SGD5,000 to support the 60+ villager- performers, broader villager participation, and village community events at Pulau Ubin.
A documentary and a live performance by emerging community builders Natalia and Marcus made in collaboration with Ernesto Valerio, self-taught musician who made the Singapore lounge scene in the early years, post-independence. Inspired by an intergenerational encounter where Ernesto joined an open jam unannounced with musicians half his age, this project will present the musicality and vitality of Ernesto. Ernesto just kept playing, despite shifting scenes and vanishing venues. A project of a living musical life in motion, without freezing it into nostalgia.
The Fund provides a quantum of SGD4,000 to support the realisation of this project.
This year’s peer panel brings together practitioners with expertise in different disciplines of visual arts, music, literature, performance and transdisciplinary processes, dance and community engagement. They were all recipients of the Cultural Medallion, a cultural award conferred to those who have achieved the highest artistic excellence in Singapore.
Amanda Heng turned to artmaking in her late 30s, leaving her job as a tax officer to study printmaking at LASALLE College of the Arts in 1986, before co-founding The Artist Village in 1988. She was among the first in Singapore to advance critical ideas on gender roles and identity politics not only through her art, but also by organising and participating in exhibitions on women’s issues, engaging in art education on gender politics and initiating the first women’s art collective in Singapore. Impacted by Singapore’s shifting language and cultural policies from the 1960s, Amanda’s performance and process-based practice is, for her, a means of responding meaningfully to prevailing social norms and current events while fostering collaboration and exchange with her audiences. In 2010, she was awarded the Cultural Medallion. Today, her interdisciplinary practice is grounded in broader concerns with humanity, intercultural exchanges and communication in urban conditions. She is representing Singapore at the Venice Biennale in 2026.
Dubbed “Singapore’s King of Swing,” Jeremy Monteiro has garnered critical acclaim all over the world since helping to put Singapore in the world history of jazz in 1988, when he became the first Southeast Asian to lead a band of established international jazz musicians on the main stage of the Montreux Jazz Festival, performing as “Monteiro, Young & Holt and Friends.” He started his career in 1976 at a local hotel and then as a pianist & bandleader at the famed Club 392 jazz club in Singapore in 1977 where many artists such as Nancy Wilson have performed. 2026 marks the 50th year of his career. He was awarded the Cultural Medallion in 2002 in recognition of his significant contributions to Singapore’s music scene.
Meira Chand is the author of 10 novels whose themes reflect her multicultural heritage and itinerant life. Several of her novels have been longlisted for the Booker Prize. A historical novel of Singapore, A Different Sky, was a Waterstones book-of-the-month choice, and on Oprah Winfrey’s reading list. The hit Singapore stage production, The LKY Musical, was developed from a story she wrote. She is involved in programmes to nurture and promote young Singapore writers. In December 2023 she was awarded the Cultural Medallion, Singapore’s highest literary accolade and in 2026 was inducted into the Singapore Women’s Hall of Fame.
Dr. Ong Keng Sen is Artistic Director of T:>Works. He is presently artist-in-residence at Humboldt Forum Berlin, one of the newest cultural institutions of Germany. In 2003, he received the Cultural Medallion. He was the first independent artist to become Festival Director of Singapore International Festival of Arts (SIFA), which he renamed, from 2013 to 2017. His productions have been seen in major international venues, for instance, Trojan Women played BAM Next Wave Festival in New York and Edinburgh International Festival to rave reviews. He was Artistic Director of Amsterdam-based Prince Claus Funds’ digital 25-hour Festival and mentored its Mobile Academies in Accra, Buenos Aires, Colombo, and Kassel Documenta. In 2026, he gave the keynote at the VCUarts Qatar on Art and Community Practice. Keng Sen was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Arts London. He holds his own Ph.D. in Performance Studies from New York University Tisch School Of Arts.
Madam Som Said is the founder and artistic director of Sri Warisan Som Said Performing Arts Ltd, and has dedicated her life to preserving and developing Malay dance in Singapore. Her works often revolve around stories from the Malay Peninsula, such as Tun Fatimah (1989) and Bangsawan in Dance (1998), with a signature choreographic style that blends Malay dance routines and gestures with contemporary moves and pan-Asian gestures. Madam Som is also a passionate arts educator, and has taught Malay dance to students of all ages. She received the Cultural Medallion in 1987.
Projects can be initiated and implemented solo, or in a team of mature or intergenerational individuals, centering the agency of mature individuals. Projects may engage with intergenerational discourse, in particular on the continuities of relating to different generations, linking memories, wisdoms, legacies and future sustainabilities. We welcome projects that are engaged with, and actively interface with communities. Projects can include but are not limited to different forms of expressions: activations, community engagement, performance, literature, digital projects, visual arts, sound/music, film/video/new media, design/architecture, traditional arts, critical discourse, or any form of public expression.
We believe that such a grant scheme is the most participatory way to approach a broad and inclusive base responding to the needs of ageing individuals. Hence, the projects should move towards empowerment, autonomy, inclusivity, mutual understanding, dialogue and diversity on the topic of ageing wellness in life and community.
The AGEncy Fund includes the following as its criteria for selection:
(1) Independent and process-oriented projects, rather than product-orientated projects, (2) Projects can be existing or new, (3) Projects can be individual phases of larger projects extending beyond January 2027, (4) Continuity and sustainability of projects, (5) Projects that empower and capacity-build communities, (6) Visibility of the project e.g. events and project website, (7) Presence of other sources of funding will be viewed positively, (8) Projects can be multilingual, and (9) Artistic merit of the project or its positive impact on ageing within cultures.
AGEncy Fund project grants will be selected by a Peer Panel with expertise in different disciplines, and may be up to a maximum of SGD10,000 for each project.
Ageing never happens in isolation; it is always happening in connection with life and community.
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