The Singapore Prize is the world’s most prestigious award program that spotlights innovative solutions to climate change. It is a partnership between the Singapore government, Temasek Trust, GenZero, and Conservation International. It also brings together a global network of partners committed to delivering scalable, impactful outcomes for people and nature.
The 2023 winners were announced on Tuesday 7 November at a gala awards ceremony in Singapore. The two winning books are Reviving Qixi: Singapore’s Forgotten Seven Sisters Festival by Lynn Wong Yuqing and Lee Kok Leong and Theatres of Memory: Industrial Heritage of 20th Century Singapore by Loh Kah Seng, Alex Tan Tiong Hee, Koh Keng Wee, and Juria Toramae.
Britain’s Prince William, whose Royal Foundation charity launched the award in 2020, attended the awards ceremony and took a moment to gaze out at the 40-metre high Rain Vortex, the world’s largest indoor waterfall that was illuminated green in his honour. The heir to the British throne last visited Singapore with his wife Princess Catherine in 2012.
In an evening of firsts, the NUS Singapore History Prize awarded its first female winner for English poetry and gave out double wins for both Chinese and English fiction. Marylyn Tan made history as the first writer in the program’s 28-year history to win the prize for her debut collection of poems, Gaze Back, which took on taboo subjects from menstruation to sexuality.
The prize also honoured its youngest-ever winner for Chinese poetry, and rewarded the first double win in English creative nonfiction in the prize’s 27-year history. Shubigi Rao, an artist and National University of Singapore professor emeritus, won the English creative nonfiction prize for her Pulp III: An Intimate Inventory Of The Banished Book (2022), the third instalment of her decade-long project on banned books.
The Singapore International Violin Competition (2022) saw a record number of violinists from around the world participate in this year’s edition. Held at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, this year’s competition was adjudicated by a distinguished panel consisting of Professor Qian Zhou (Chair), Martin Beaver, Martin T:son Engstroem, Mihaela Martin, and Joel Smirnoff. The three winning violinists, Dmytro Bortnyansky, Anna-Lise Lindström and Angela Wei, performed concertos with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra under the baton of conductor Mihaela Martin. The finalists were selected from an initial pool of more than 900 applicants. All finalists are required to take part in the audition process, which included video-conferencing and face-to-face interviews. The winners will be crowned at an official ceremony at the Yong Siew Toh conservatory. This will be followed by a concert by all the finalists featuring works from composers such as Strauss and Beethoven. The event will be streamed live on Facebook. Yong Siew Toh Conservatory has also recorded and released a special album, The Grand Finale: Winners Sing Their Victory, to celebrate the victory of the 2022 winners. The album can be purchased at the venue on the day of the concert. For more information, visit the Singapore Prize website.
