Mr Jose Isidro "Lito" Camacho, Chairman, UAS
Ms Low Sin Leng, Chairman, NAFA
Professor Kwok Kian Woon, Vice-Chancellor
Graduands and distinguished guests
1. Good morning.
2. Today we celebrate the achievements of our graduands. We are all proud of how far you have come. I'm sure I can say the same for your family and loved ones, as well as your lecturers, professors and mentors, too.
The Significance of UAS
3. This occasion is particularly significant because we celebrate the first cohort graduating from UAS. Singapore's first Government-supported private university dedicated to the arts brings together the complementary strengths of LASALLE and NAFA, both longstanding, veritable institutions with deep heritage and culture. By coming together, projecting optimism and energy into the future, you nurture a new generation of creative talent and help shape Singapore as a creative, innovation-driven city.
4. As the pioneering cohort, you have helped shape the University's identity and culture. LASALLE and NAFA students have formed joint interest groups and CCAs — building friendships across disciplines and institutions through shared interests, and strengthening the common spirit of the UAS community.
5. You have also collaborated beyond the campus. For this year's Light to Night Festival at our Civic District, you created an installation that invited visitors to move and rearrange its pieces, to effectively become co-creators of an evolving composition. At UAS's first overseas residency with HUBART, you also created works inspired by communities and landscapes. I want to congratulate all the teams who worked so hard on this.
The Value of Arts Education in a Changing Landscape
6. You are graduating into a world of profound change: a more complex global environment, the growing effects of climate change, and rapid advances in technology.
7. It is understandable, across all disciplines and sectors, to wonder how technology will affect society and our workplaces, especially when it can create and generate so much content within seconds. We will support you as you enter the workforce—helping you access good opportunities and keep building the skills needed for a changing workplace.
8. More fundamentally, your arts education has given you a strong foundation for what lies ahead. As technology becomes more capable, deeply human qualities will matter ever more: creativity, judgment, empathy, cultural fluency, wisdom and values. Technology can generate content. But to make this content deeply meaningful and impactful, we need people to ask the right questions, make sense of complexity, decide what is worth creating, and think completely out of the box.
9. That is why an arts education matters more than ever. Technology, no matter how powerful, remains tools – it is up to the artist to create, to invent, and to rise to the occasion and master these tools. An arts education trains you to observe closely, find meaning amid ambiguity, communicate across cultures and communities, and imagine what does not yet exist. These are capabilities that matter in the creative industries and well beyond.
10. Arts graduates that have gone before you have brought these capabilities and skills into diverse fields and excelled.
- LASALLE alumnus Boo Junfeng has won international acclaim for his films, which often explore themes of identity, memory and belonging.
- NAFA alumna Dr Susie Lingham has had a wide-ranging career as an artist, writer and art educator, including serving as Director of the Singapore Art Museum, and overseeing the Singapore Biennale.
- Khairuddin Bin Hori, an alumnus of both LASALLE and NAFA, has had a distinguished career as a curator around the world, including the Singapore Art Museum and National Heritage Board locally, as well as taken up posts in Paris and Abu Dhabi.
- LASALLE alumnus Samuel Lim has brought design thinking into wayfinding, transforming transport signage systems in Singapore and Qatar before starting his own consultancy.
- NAFA alumna Celine Ng founded a design studio that champions sustainability in experiential spaces, developing reconfigurable products using eco-friendly materials.
11. The list goes on. They show that arts education empowers individuals who use these talents, skills and instincts, in not just the arts and creative industry but well beyond. Their journeys show how an arts education can open pathways in arts, design and beyond — and how creativity, when paired with purpose and conviction, makes a meaningful difference.
Creativity That Makes a Difference
12. Your education at UAS, LASALLE and NAFA, has equipped you with these skills and dispositions too.
13. You have learned to create — envisioning the future while honouring our heritage. For example, Nawal Binti Azhar, from NAFA's Bachelor of Arts (Honours) Design Practice, reimagined the traditional wet market as a shared community space in her project, Common Gatherers, helping younger generations connect with stallholders. Today, she is a recipient of NAFA's Best Graduate Award.
14. You also connect with people—across communities, cultures and disciplines.
- Keane Tay, from NAFA's Bachelor of Arts (Honours) Design Practice, drew on his own experience caring for his grandmother. With Van Rene Rasmei, Maria Felicia and Michelle Angeline Sutandi, he developed the Familiarity Card — a personalised payment card with a feature that alerts a caregiver if a senior has not returned home at the usual time. Keane receives The Ngee Ann Kongsi Gold Medal today.
- Another one of our graduands, Mitchell Hoo from LASALLE's Bachelor of Arts (Honours) Fashion Media and Industries uses photography, editorial work and curation to explore the relationship between fashion, identity and society, and has brought Southeast Asian culture to international audiences. Today, he receives the McNally Award for Excellence in the Arts.
15. You also contribute to something larger than yourself. Masha Nyanna from LASALLE's Bachelor of Arts (Honours) Design for Social Futures, responded to challenges she saw while volunteering with youths from lower-income families. Her project, In Spaces Between: The Starline Project, uses guided letter-writing and dialogue to help teenagers open up and build trust with adults around them.
Conclusion
16. As you graduate, know that many paths lie ahead. Some of you will become artists, performers, curators, or cultural leaders of acclaim. While some of you will take your training into fields as diverse as healthcare, technology, media, sustainability, public service, enterprise, and beyond. Some of you may do both at different stages of your lives. With great uncertainty and with great upheaval comes tremendous opportunity for the artist to make sense of a world that's harder to make sense of today, and create a future for all of us to believe. Wherever you go, you can help us see clearly, design thoughtfully, and tell stories that move others to action.
17. So to all our graduates, go forward with confidence: create with courage, connect with empathy, and contribute with purpose.
18. Congratulations once again to the Class of 2026. I wish you every success in your life journey ahead. Thank you.