This premier event featured some of the world’s top food, travel, tech, beauty and wellness brands to promote Singapore to over 100 million Thai consumers online and build connections for Singapore companies to expand business in Thailand.
The inaugural Lee Kuan Yew Water Prize recognizes individuals or organisations for outstanding contributions towards developing sustainable water solutions that benefit humanity, in keeping with Singapore’s founding father Lee Kuan Yew’s vision and foresight in ensuring clean and safe water supplies in his nation. It comes with three cash prizes and four accolades worth S$200,000 total.
NUS recently unveiled six works shortlisted for its second Singapore History Prize, offering a $50,000 award. NUS hopes this prize will “stimulate engagement with Singapore’s history broadly understood” and make past events more accessible, according to a press release issued by its department. Entries may address any time period, theme, or field related to Singaporean history as long as their narrative includes significant aspects of its past as part of their narrative.
Kishore Mahbubani, former US Ambassador and now Distinguished Fellow at NUS Asia Research Institute, organized this prize in 2014 to mark America’s 50th anniversary of independence. The prize takes its name from President John F Kennedy’s famous 1962 “Moonshot” speech that encouraged all Americans to set high ambitions and realize them before the decade was up.
Mahbubani will serve as jury chair when selecting and announcing a winner of this prize in October 2024. He lauded the work of its five-member nominating committee – comprised of academia, civil service and arts individuals – which reviewed 26 books submitted from publishers for consideration. Prizes will be presented in both non-fiction and fiction categories.
At this year’s awards gala, in addition to top awards there was also a reader’s choice category with four winning titles, such as KTM Iqbal’s novel which earned her cultural medallion and Esplanade communications and content head Clarissa Oon’s creative nonfiction piece English creative non-fiction entitled Clarissa Oon’s English creative non-fiction entitled Cockman (2022) by Kenfoo who writes of an alien chicken trapped here on Earth and forced into human form, and Magic Babe Ning (2023) by Jeremy Tiang wherein she travels into another dimension through her violin playing to explore another world called Babe Ning 2023 by Jeremy Tiang who writes of an adventure wherein girl finds an entry point to enter another dimension by way of violin playing!
Prince William and Hannah Waddingham coordinated perfectly at Theatre Mediacorp for an elegant awards ceremony that culminated with an extravagant awards ceremony featuring Prince William wearing dark green velour suits with dickie bows. Prince William walked down a thick green carpet while Prince posed for photos with winners. Finalists then performed concertos alongside Singapore Symphony Orchestra conducted by Joshua Kangming Tan while winners Dmytro Udovychenko, Anna Agafia Egholm, and Angela Sin Ying Chan each received USD $110,000 prize money plus multiple concert engagements – you can view a complete list here.