ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an account of the developments of three traditional crafts, namely batik, papercut, and pyrography, within the secondary school art curriculum in Singapore. It explores the idea that the maker movement provides art educators with avenues to rethink the teaching of cultural practices in the Singapore art curriculum. The art curriculum in Singapore schools embraces a wide range of art, craft, and design practices reflecting the makeup of Singapore as a multicultural migrant society. Art educators in Singapore often reach out to prominent local cultural associations to make culturally relevant connections between arts and crafts taught in schools, and local cultural communities. Making in maker movement has links to a myriad of activities such as tinkering, do-it-yourself, digital fabrication, crafts, and hobbies, and emphasises “designing, building, modifying, and/or repurposing material objects”. The reverence for technical skills and conformity to norms of these crafts forms could be tied to their perceived function in the preservation and transmission of culture.
