Re-Route Festival to debut at Singapore Design Week, spotlighting Little India’s heritage

Making its debut at Singapore Design Week, the Re-Route Festival will spotlight Little India’s heritage through design activations that showcase the less known aspects of the district’s history.

Running from Sep 16 to Oct 9, the festival aims to demonstrate how design can be used as a tool to highlight Singapore’s heritage. 

The Re-Route Festival is curated by interdisciplinary group Plus Collaboratives’s creative director Mervin Tan and design director Cheryl Sim, and is supported by the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) and DesignSingapore Council.

In a bid to encourage its visitors to explore the district through a new lens, the festival highlights three lesser-explored spaces of Little India: Race Course, New World Amusement Park and Serangoon Road.

The rich heritage and history behind each site will be conveyed to visitors through design activations such as art installations, design fixtures, activities and performances by Singapore artists. 

Behind each site’s design activations are a group of Singapore creatives like photographers that will collaborate with the festival organisers to create activations that connect visitors to the histories of Little India. 

Mr Mervin Tan shared that through the festival, he hopes to get visitors to see beyond the typical areas they would visit in Little India and appreciate the site as a whole.

“The Re-Route Festival intends to introduce story cores that will draw people into other areas of Little India and explore the untold histories of the area,” he added.

While the festival is free for the public, the walking tours will be ticketed. Details on how to purchase tickets will be released at a later date. For more information on the Re-Route Festival, head over to its Instagram page.