Singapore’s multicultural heritage is one of its greatest strengths, a dynamic interplay of languages, faiths, customs, and stories that have shaped a shared national identity across generations. Yet in an era of digital acceleration, global connectivity, and social transformation, heritage is no longer static. It is fluid, adaptive, and increasingly mediated through technology. The challenge before us is not only how to preserve this diversity, but how to innovate with it, sustain it, and reimagine it for the future.
This edition of the Co-Lab Forum responds to the urgent question: how can we not only safeguard but reimagine multicultural heritage for the future? Framed by the idea that heritage is a critical resource for innovation, the event brings together researchers, cultural experts, artists, industry leaders, and community voices to explore how cultural identities are expressed, transmitted, transformed, and revitalised in the digital age.
Opening SpeecH
Professor Jon WILSON
Dean, College of Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences, NTU
Keynote SPEAKER
Artist Talk
Galina MIHALEVA
Associate Professor, Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, Arizona State University
Panel Discussion
Situating Digital Multicultural Heritage: Continuity, Challenges, and Strategies
This interdisciplinary panel brings together leading scholars, practitioners, and experts to explore what it means to value and situate multicultural heritage within today’s digital society. Just as Singapore (and the region) is shaped by diverse voices, beliefs, and histories, so too our approaches to preservation, engagement, and innovation reflect this complexity.
With rapid digital transformation and increasing reliance on technologies like AI, immersive media, and data-driven platforms, the panel will also consider how these technologies are reshaping not only access and representation but also knowledge production and collective memory. What are the risks and promises of digital mediation? How do we ensure continuity and authenticity while navigating technological change and global influences?
Drawing from insights from design, archives, art history, cultural studies, curatorial practice, industry and technology, the panel explores the technical challenges of digital heritage and the implications of how we document, transmit, and transform cultural memory in today’s multicultural societies.
Research Roundtable
Reimagining Multicultural Heritage: Digital Innovations and Research Direction
This research roundtable invites an interdisciplinary group of scholars, experts, and professionals to collaboratively explore future research pathways at the intersection of multicultural heritage and digital transformation. The session is rooted in the belief that multicultural heritage is not merely something to be protected, but a dynamic and generative resource—one that informs inclusive futures, civic identity, creative expression, and socio-economic innovation. As digital technologies increasingly mediate how cultural identities are expressed, represented, and shared, there is an urgent need to reassess the frameworks and methods through which multiculturalism is conceptualised, studied, and practised. This roundtable aims to identify critical challenges, uncover emerging opportunities, and foster interdisciplinary research collaborations that can influence digital cultural policy, curatorial design, platform development, and education within multicultural contexts.
Possible topics for discussion include, but are not limited to:
Multicultural heritage as a resource: Developing conceptual and practice-oriented frameworks to understand multicultural heritage as a dynamic resource. This involves exploring how traditions, values, and creative knowledge systems can inform sustainable development, intercultural understanding, community resilience, inclusive education, and innovation across cultural, technological, and economic sectors.
Performative and Experiential Digital Multicultural Heritage: Investigating how digital technologies can capture, remediate, and represent multicultural traditions, performances, and embodied experiences. This encompasses addressing challenges of authenticity, presence, and participation across time and space, as well as considering the role of archives, platforms, and performative media in preserving ephemeral and community-based practices.
Interactive and Immersive Multiculturalism: Examining the potential, promises, and limitations of immersive technologies, AI, and interactive interfaces in shaping new modes of engagement with multicultural heritage. Discussions may explore how these tools enable affective storytelling, facilitate co-creation with communities, and ethically represent complex and layered cultural identities.
See Programme Tab for the Speakers.
Convenor
Organised by
Nanyang Technological University, NISTH
Singapore Society of Asian Studies (SSAS)
Venue SPONsor
Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SCCCI)
