Free Entry to Museums

Ms Janice Koh asked the Acting Minister for Culture, Community and Youth whether National Heritage Board will consider giving all Singaporeans free entry to its museums all year round.

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Mr Speaker, Sir, the suggestion for free admission to our museums is an initiative which the National Heritage Board (NHB) has been carefully studying for some time.

Over the past three years, NHB has granted free admission to the permanent galleries of our National Museums to various segments of our population – Singapore citizens and Permanent Residents who are students, teachers, full-time National Servicemen and senior citizens. These groups currently enjoy free admission to the permanent galleries of NHB's museums all year round. In addition to this, NHB also offers 15 open house days annually where all visitors are able to visit both the permanent and changing exhibitions of NHB institutions free of charge. Many of these open house days are synchronised with our national holidays.

Starting from 2011, NHB has also offered free admission for Singaporeans and Singapore PRs to the permanent galleries of all NHB institutions for the month of August in celebration of our National Day. This was piloted in 2011, continued this year and NHB will continue to offer this in August every year. So, the free admission in the month of August will be a yearly thing, as part of our National Day celebration.

All of these initiatives have brought about an increase in the number of visitors to the museums. But we have also noticed that there are relatively more visitors when there are special programmes in the museums. Visitorship is also driven by the quality of programming, and this requires significant resources to sustain. Otherwise, as we have observed in some European countries which offer free admissions, visitorship numbers can still taper off after an initial phase. We are continually reviewing our strategies to ensure that we take a sensible and also a sustainable approach which maximises visitorship experience in our museums.

I would like to assure Members of the House that the Ministry and NHB will continue to study our visitor habits and our admission policies, so as to reach out to all Singaporeans and deepen the appreciation for our shared heritage.

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