The Singapore Prize aims to reward projects that demonstrate exceptional design and innovation in various fields. It is awarded by a panel of judges appointed by the President of NUS. The criteria for selecting a winner in a given three-year cycle are defined by the judges and announced together with the closing nomination date at least a year ahead of the award being presented.
The prestigious award was founded in 2021 by two of Singapore’s largest donors, the Lee Foundation and the Lien Foundation. It is the largest grantmaker in Asia and disburses over S$32 million per annum to a variety of charities and causes. Its grantees include the Ngee Ann Polytechnic and LASALLE College of the Arts, but it mainly focuses on tackling root causes such as eldercare, early childhood development and water and sanitation.
In a rare visit to Singapore, Prince William was greeted by fans lining the Jewel Changi Airport holding homemade signs and photos of his late mother Princess Diana. The heir to the British throne was visiting for the third annual Earthshot Prize awards ceremony, an ambitious global initiative led by Prince William to tackle climate change and protect the planet.
Among the winners was Accion Andina, GRST, WildAid Marine Program and S4S Technologies, which will receive catalytic funds to scale their environmental solutions. The event was hosted by Singapore’s mediacorp campus, a hub for cutting-edge innovation and entrepreneurship.
A total of five projects were shortlisted for this year’s prize, and the winners will be honoured at an awards ceremony in November.
This year, a special emphasis was placed on “resonance,” which was defined as a literary work’s ability to elicit emotion and memory. This was chosen to reflect the ongoing global societal challenges, including social and economic inequality. The winning entries will be displayed in the Singapore Art Museum in 2023.
The prize’s 30th anniversary saw the introduction of the consumer choice category, where readers voted for their favorite books from the shortlisted titles. In this round of voting, four of the shortlisted authors–Ali bin Salim, Daryl Qilin Yam, Pan Zheng Lei and rma cureess (Rama Suresh)–clinched Readers’ Favourite prizes in both English fiction and Tamil fiction.
Poet Grace Chia was the only shortlisted poet not to win a prize, but she made headlines for her speech in which she accused the Singapore Literature Prize of sexism. She was referring to the fact that both of the prize’s male poetry winners were co-winners, which she believes is a reflection of engendered privilege in Singapore’s literary scene. The speech was later removed from Facebook.