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Interview with R. Ramachandran, Singapore Book Council
by Marjorie Coughlan*
Mr Ramachandran is the Executive Director of the National Book Development Council of Singapore (NBDCS). Over the course of his career as a librarian, including in his role as National Librarian of Singapore, Rama was always actively involved in the NBDCS, serving as its Honorary Secretary and subsequently as its Chairman. Following his retirement from the National Library, he was appointed Secretary General of the International Federation of Libraries and Institutions (IFLA). In 2006, he was invited to become Executive Director of the NBDCS, in order to bring to fruition the vision he had had for the organisation during his term as Chairman. One of the initiatives he has brought into being is the acclaimed Asian Festival of Children's Content (AFCC), an annual event that has now been running for two years.
Rama lives with his family in Singapore.
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How did the Asian Festival of Children’s Content (AFCC) come into being?
As a librarian I realised that the availability of children’s literature with an Asian focus was limited: limited in number, that is. And those books that were available were not attractively produced and were aggressively marketed. The good books produced by the Asian diaspora were too expensive and again not readily distributed in Asia. Asian children were not reading about themselves. The books that were being read were not set in an environment that they were familiar with and could relate to. In the meantime, schools and libraries were being developed. The need for materials for Asian Children was urgent.
In 2000, when I was Chairman of the Book Council, I organised the Asian Children’s Writers and Illustrators Conference (ACWIC) to address these concerns. It was a small conference of 50 to 60 professionals largely from Singapore and other Asian countries. Everyone who attended the conference appreciated the need for it: it was generally agreed that it was timely and that there was certainly a need to organise it every year. Hence, from that year on the ACWIC was organised annually and the number of participants grew to about 200 by 2008.
In 2008, I thought that it was time to make the conference bigger and better and to develop the event into a Festival. Thus ACWIC morphed into AFCC in 2010.
Why do you think Singapore is the place to bring together an Asian focus on Children’s Literature?
I think there are three reasons why Singapore is one of the best places to promote an Asian focus on Children’s Literature:
Firstly, Singapore is multicultural. Almost every ethnic group in Asia is represented in Singapore’s demography. It is like a little Asia. Hence, Singapore would not focus on one language or one ethnic group. It would embrace all the diversity of Asia, something which none of the other countries would be able to do as readily or as spontaneously.
Secondly, because of its multicultural diversity, Singapore can serve as a market place for all books with an Asian focus. It can then also serve as a hub for the buying and selling of international rights of books published in different countries in Asia. It is the best place for the translation of books to or from Chinese, Tamil and Malay, and from Indonesian into English. These languages are widely spoken and taught in Singapore.
And finally, English is one of the official languages in Singapore. English is used as a vehicle to connect the diverse Asian writers into a cohesive whole. In addition, books published in English in the US, UK, Australia and New Zealand that have an Asian focus and writers who write such books will have a place in AFCC. This is important as an understanding of children and the art of writing for them are mainly an expertise resident in the West. Currently, a large number of books for children in Asia are written as if they are intended for adults.
Singapore gives writers in the West an opportunity to share their expertise with their fellow
professionals from Asia. Training and sharing are an important part of AFCC and Singapore readily facilitates such sessions. AFCC is not restricted to Asian writers. It is a platform for all writers writing for Asia or writers whose content is Asian.
Does the Festival have any outreach – into local schools, for example?
Yes! Several of the speakers at AFCC have gone to schools for talks and appearances. This is done before and after and also during the Festival - whenever they are free. Schools are notified of the speakers and they invite those whom they fancy. In the future we will make this a more dynamic part of the programme.
For Institutions that provide courses for primary and preschool teachers, we offer trainee
teachers a special rate to enable them to attend the Festival programme.
What were some of the highlights of this year’s Festival, for you personally?
This year’s Festival highlights were the two awards for Children’s Books and the Literature Lecture. The Scholastic Asia Book Award is the only award for an Asian children’s book and we are very proud to have launched it with the support of Scholastic. We hope to develop a wider range of awards for children’s content over the next few years. Next year we hope to announce the details of the Asian Children’s Book Illustrators Award.
The Children’s Literature Lecture by H.E. Dr. Jose Ramos-Horta, the President of Timor– Leste was a memorable event that added stature and depth to the Festival.
The third feature that was well received was the introduction of the Children’s Media Summit.
This Summit brought in the new media people involved in the creation and development of Children’s content. This group completes the circle of people we are targeting to be involved in the Festival.
How would you like to see the Festival developing in the future?
We are hoping for more active and intensive participation from industry players, such as literary agents, publishers, distributors, rights agents and translators. We hope that producers of TV and films for children might look to this Festival for content that would make a good film or TV series. We want to encourage multimedia and multi platform publications/ productions from one story. We hope to gather both the content creators and content packages, and producers of all media, in one place, in the hope that a business relationship might grow between them, resulting in new content being developed and produced.
Traditional print media and new media do not mix well in Asia. We want to make this happen.
The Media Mart would play a more dynamic role in making this come about in the future.
The National Book Development Council of Singapore runs an annual Storytelling Festival. Can you tell us a bit about it, and why you feel storytelling is an important aspect of the Book Council’s work?
Story is the foundation of all literary activity. Without a good story no writer can excel and no book would reach out to the audience. Hence, we feel that we must promote the mastery of the story and its structure as fundamental to all sxtorytelling efforts. Our storytelling festival emphasises that every story has to appeal to a listener. Without a listener or a reader a story has no audience. We want to emphasise that the writer is not a lone voice – he is the voice of his audience.
Can you tell us about some of the other initiatives the Book Council is involved with?
We organise a large number of programmes some of which are listed below. Both our Programmes and our advisory and consultancy work are focused on four areas, storytelling, reading, writing and publishing.
We have a Centre for Literary Arts and Publishing (CLAP), which provides quality training for professionals in publishing and the literary arts throughout the year. We also hold Publishers and Writers Network (PWN) meetings to connect writers and publishers. Our Singapore Writers Centre provides a one-stop service and networking centre where writers can gain access to a variety of services and resources tailored to their specific needs. Together with the government’s Media Development Authority (MDA), we have developed our First-Time Writers & Illustrators Publishing Initiative, which nurtures talent in writing for children and assists with the publication of new works by unpublished Singapore writers and illustrators. And we collaborate with publishers and authors to celebrate the launch of new publications.
At the Singapore Book Council we also host two book clubs – the Singapore Book Club (SBC) and Singapore Children's Book Club (SCBC) They hold regular meetings and organise a programme of public events for people to share their views on selected books. The Clubs focus on books with a strong Singaporean and Asian flavour. And we hold Specialised Language Workshops in different languages including Chinese, Malay and Tamil, focusing on areas such as publishing, storytelling, creative writing and reading .
Each year, we hold the Singapore International Storytelling Festival (SISF), which aims to explore the many manifestations of storytelling, stretching from its simplest application in the nursery right through to cultivating community togetherness, resolving conflicts, strengthening communication in the business sphere, and, of course, as an aid to learning in education. SISF includes the Origins: Asia Pacific Business Narrative Conference which aims to foster the practice of business storytelling and narrative techniques among government agencies and corporations.
We also organise the annual All In! Young Writers Seminar for students from local polytechnics and colleges, as well as tertiary level education. The programme introduces them to the world of writing, both its opportunities and its challenges, and brings them into contact with leading practitioners in the writing and publishing fields.
And last, but by no means least, we present two biannual literary awards, the Singapore Literature Prize and the Hedwid Anuar Children's Book Award, for an outstanding children’s book written by a Singaporean or Permanent Resident in Singapore. In addition, in conjuction with AFCC, we have just inaugurated the Scholastic Asian Book Award, in conjunction with Scholastic, to be given annually for an unpublished manuscript.
How do you see children’s book publishing adapting (or not) to the impact of digitalisation and ever increasing technological awareness among the children of today’s, and indeed tomorrow’s, world?
Publishers are businessmen and quick to adapt and adopt the new media and meet market needs. What I fear will happen in this process is that they will give the traditional printed
material a miss and go where the immediate demand is and the fashion beacons beckon.
However, I still see scope for books as we know them. But a book will have to become a work of art, a niche publication that combines the beauty of paper, words and art on paper, packaged and presented in all its glory to the reader. Such a book will always have a place and a market, even as technology advances and impacts on book publishing as a whole. Like libraries, books will not perish. They will embrace technology, and reinvent themselves as a niche player. Just like bestsellers are turned into movies and other media, the future may see more of the mega media hits turned into beautiful books of words and pictures.
What concerns me, though, is that there appears to be a lack of confidence among publishers to rethink and use the changes in technology to present the book in all its might and glory, and to exploit its unique features to retain the readers and buyers.
What role do you see for organisations such as the National Book Development Council of Singapore, which promote literacy and the importance of children’s stories and books, in the
future?
The role of institutions like ours becomes even more important in the scenario outlined above. Books are continually evolving in terms of style, quality and packaging, and they will survive alongside more modern media. If one cannot express one’s creativity through the written word, or explore the creativity of others through reading, through whatever medium one is familiar with, society ceases to develop - indeed, begins to regress. Organisations like ours must continue our efforts to impress upon people that stories, reading and writing are fundamental, no matter what form they take and no matter how technology develops. We will continue to be active in promoting this message.
*Marjorie Coughlan is PaperTigers Editor
Posted July 2011
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