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Comment by OVEPI on February 5, 2024 at 8:37pm

Rimbun Dahan offers free residencies where Southeast Asian artists can come and stay for a period of a few months and receive a stipend, while Malaysian artists can stay up to a year.

During the longer residencies, the artist will usually complete a set of artworks that will culminate in an exhibition, with guidance from Rimbun Dahan.

These costs are then offset by artists from outside the region, who pay a fee to access the residency. These are just a few examples of how Malaysia’s creative hubs help to develop talent and career opportunities. Other hubs, meanwhile, encourage members to share advice amongst each other.

The Malaysian Writers Society often posts information about writing rates and publishing opportunities to their Facebook group. They also invite people in the group to share their own knowledge. “We’re trying to show [writers] that if you succeed, then you bring others up with you,” says Tina 

Beyond offering training and development to their own members and partners, creative hubs in Malaysia are also leading the way when it comes to public engagement with the arts.

Some of them have been able to obtain sponsorship from partners who recognise this value. But it is the hubs that create and sustain this engagement in the long term, regardless of whether it is profitable or not.

While most of these creative hubs do not call themselves “social enterprises”, many of them share some aspects of a social enterprise. For example, they use their revenue to reinvest back into the hub, in order to sustain its activities and offer more services at a cheap rate, if not for free, to both members and to the public.

Kilang Bateri, for example, is a creative and commercial hub in Johor Bahru, which earns revenue through renting space to almost 200 independent retail and food vendors. However, the opportunity is provided to the vendors at a lower cost than a commercial space, so that the threshold for starting a business is lower. The rest of the space is also used to host events, but “if it’s anything to do with the arts, we give for free,” says Johan Ropi, co-founder. For example, busking musicians can use the space for free, as can university related events.

The Actors Studio Seni Teater Rakyat strives to keep their shows affordable, because they see this as a way of nurturing both the audience

and performers: “If you look back 10 or 15 years ago, the ticket price that we had was in the range of RM20 to RM35,” says Ian Chow, adding that today’s prices are only about RM5 more.

Comment by OVEPI on February 5, 2024 at 8:36pm

George Town Festival aims to keep their shows accessible as well, sometimes at the cost of incurring huge losses when they bring in world renowned theatre and dance performances.

Of 2016’s programme, 118 of the total 141 events were free.7 They also partner with Teach For Malaysia, an NGO which aims to raise the educational quality of schools.

“We’ve adopted schools from Teach for Malaysia to expose them to see shows,” says Joe Sidek, festival director. “Because young kids at 12 to 14, cannot afford to see culture.” He recalls meeting one child who had been “the worst kid” in his class, but who had later become a top student and thanked Joe personally for the experience of seeing the shows. “It changed my life, it’s given meaning to me and how we can educate people,” says Joe.

Art For Grabs is a bazaar which combines independent retail stalls with live music and panel discussions. It includes vendors who range from social-political and environmental activists to craft makers and artisans, experimental artists, booksellers and zine distributors.

Often, Art For Grabs partners with NGOs to theme its content around social causes. In March 2017, the “Fifty Shades of Green” theme (sponsored by the Selangor Tourism, Environment, Green Technology and Consumer Affairs Committee), included a panel discussion from indigenous people who spoke about the threats to their native forest land.

Of course, these examples only serve as the most visible and memorable of a wider impact. Creative hubs can contribute to a long-term elationship that people have with the arts, with each other and with themselves.

“My interest is in people reinvesting and redefining their acts of citizenship,” says Pang Khee Teik, founder of Art For Grabs. “Like speaking in public, demonstrating, expressing themselves. Things that people entitled to rights in a space would do. By the act of doing that, that then assumes an act of citizenship. So I see the process as a creative act.”

Lostgens, which started with a focus on contemporary art, has evolved to be actively involved in community projects such as cultural mapping and oral histories in various places around Malaysia, including Pudu9, Kuala Lumpur, as well as Melaka and Ulu Langat.

Yeoh of Lostgens also spearheaded the Petaling Street Community Art project. This was a movement to raise awareness of the proposed MRT construction in Chinatown, which at one point threatened to demolish several historic buildings before a compromise was reached. The art project included protest posters, talks and performances in Chinatown.10

“There’s no rules on what we ought to be doing, but we’ll care about our surroundings and current events,” Yeoh says, when asked about the mission of Lostgens. “What we’ve done is create some examples of community projects, how to go about these activities such as oral histories, collecting old photos. Letting people see the possibility of using art as a medium for these concepts.”

Comment by OVEPI on February 5, 2024 at 1:56pm

LOSTGENS

Lostgens is a contemporary art studio and collective which also works actively on community projects such as cultural mapping and oral histories, and sometimes branches out into other art forms such as music. It started as a group of friends who organised a festival, Not That Balai Art Festival. Lostgens offers residences to visiting artists, and their space also comprises a simple café and shop selling books and crafts

ZHONGSHAN BUILDING AT KAMPUNG ATTAP

The Zhongshan Building is a series of restored 1950s shoplots in the quiet commercial enclave of Kampung Attap, near central Kuala Lumpur. The building is anchored by a gallery space, OUR ArtProjects. The same team owns the building and leases out units to other creative groups and businesses, including a record store, design archive, library and more.

GEORGE TOWN FESTIVAL

George Town Festival is an annual festival that runs for a month across various venues in George Town, Penang. The festival includes international and Malaysian theatre, dance, and music performances, exhibitions, talks, food bazaars and other cultural engagements. Funded primarily by the Penang state government, the festival also works with a range of other partners including NGOs and the private sector.

MALAYSIAN WRITERS SOCIETY

The Malaysian Writers Society is a society for the professional advancement of Malaysian writers, writing locally or abroad. It started as a Facebook group, the Malaysian Writers Community / Komuniti Penulis Malaysia, set up in 2014. The society was formalised with a committee and membership in 2016. It runs an annual festival and also holds talks by writers. The Facebook group has 5000 members to date, the society has over 100 members

PROJEK RABA

Projek Rabak is an art collective based in Ipoh, which also has a gallery space in Wisma Central, Kuala Lumpur. The collective includes musicians, writers, poets, painters, filmmakers, theatre activists, mime artists and few others. Activities include an indie publishing press, Rabak Lit, as well as the Ipoh Kreative festival. Projek Rabak’s artspace Khizanat has a café and retail space, and there is also a guesthouse, Rumah Khizanat.

Rimbun Dahan

Rimbun Dahan is a residency centre for developing traditional and contemporary art forms, architecture, and creative arts nature conservation. Set on the grounds of a fruit orchard, the space spans 14 acres and features buildings designed by architect Hijjas Kasturi, who resides in the property with his wife Angela Kasturi, Rimbun Dahan Arts programme director. Rimbun Dahan offers residencies for artists and writers, dance workshops, and educational opportunities for students of architecture and ecology

The Actors Studio / Seni Teater Rakyat

The Actors Studio Seni Teater Rakyat is part of The Actors Studio, based at Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre (klpac). As a registered society, Seni Teater Rakyat focuses on supporting traditional art forms, developing emerging theatre talent and engaging the public through theatre. The Actors Studio is founded by Dato’ Faridah Merican and Joe Hasham OAM.

Comment by OVEPI on February 5, 2024 at 1:55pm

Art For Grabs

Art For Grabs is a quarterly bazaar. First started at a regular event at the Annexe Gallery at Central Market in Kuala Lumpur, it has since found different venue partners, most recently in the shopping malls JayaOne and Publika. The bazaar mixes artists, craft, artisan and book stalls and often partners with NGOs for a social cause. Held over a weekend, there are often live music, poetry readings, film screenings and talks

Kilang Bateri
Kilang Bateri is a platform for small scale entrepreneurs and creatives. The space is a converted former factory on industrial land in Johor Bahru. With a market-style layout, the space offers retail stalls for vendors selling clothes, crafts, food and more. Kilang Bateri is also a music venue and has a skate park and climbing wall. It is owned by ForeverReady Sdn Bhd., a company of four young entrepreneurs and an angel investor.

Growing Roots

Malaysian creative hubs – like many creative hubs around the world – are grassroots in nature. They are started by individuals who are passionate about creating a change, and these individuals use their own dedication, expertise, and money to fill a gap in the social infrastructure. In mapping creative hubs, we must understand that the lens of the “creative industries” is often focused on quantitative impact: job creation and economic benefits, for example. Indeed the term “creative industries”

itself already presumes some kind of economic motivation and outcome. So it’s important to note that many creative hubs in Malaysia do not prioritise quantitative outcomes. Very few of them set their own KPIs. Their concerns are often on more intangible results. To these hub managers, the “long game” is not making money, but in fact building up a culture: offering career advice, education and mentoring,
building relationships with the local community, and promoting understanding of the arts in Malaysia, to name just a few.

“We were among the first to start a serious collective […] Before this, Ipoh was very famous with just underground music. When Projek Rabak came out, we started to offer more than just music. And we offer not just entertainment, but education as well,” says Jayzuan, co-founder of Projek Rabak.

Projek Rabak was set up in 2011, and is now a selfsustaining collective whose members are involved in literature, visual art, music and more. As Jayzuan explains, the hub is one of the first of its kind in Ipoh, and it has grown to become a place where young people can come for advice and mentorship in their creative careers: as he describes it, Projek Rabak is like a “shortcut” for them.

Comment by OVEPI on February 5, 2024 at 1:55pm

Like Projek Rabak, several creative hubs we interviewed were started by individuals who wanted to help their community. Many have gone as far as using their own money to fund their creative hubs.

The Malaysian Writers Society, for example, started out as a Facebook group. The founders, Tina Isaacs and Gina Yap Lai Yoong, decided that there needed to be a platform to bring together writers of all languages, since the national writers associations GAPENA and PENA only represent Bahasa Malaysia language writers.

“It’s really out of what we thought, as writers, was lacking in the industry, so we created what we wanted. What we needed,” says Gina, president of the society.

Today, the Facebook group has 5000 members, while the society has over 100 registered, feepaying members. The group organises a regular festival to help authors sell their books, run public workshops. They also have localised chapters in different Malaysian states. But Gina and Tina are still responsible for covering any additional operation costs. “Can you count that as a 100 percent loss?” asks Gina. “No… it’s not a loss because we think it’s intangible. Intangible profit.”

Some creative hubs have formal support from local or national government bodies. Yet even in these cases, it’s clear that the personality of those leading the hubs is crucial. Often, the funding does not allow the creative hubs to be commercially profitable, so it takes someone with a vision and a personal sense of purpose to stay in the job.

Those who run creative hubs need to be not only managers but also advocates. During our interviews, we met a series of individuals who have devoted an astounding amount of time, energy and money to their creative hubs.

Yeoh Lian Heng is one of the co-founders of Lostgens, a contemporary art and community space in Chinatown, Kuala Lumpur. Yeoh is one of two members who have continued running the collective since 2004. He rarely breaks even with the operating costs and has often reflected on the struggle of running a space such as Lostgens.

“Change is slow and comes from the bottom up,” says Yeoh. “There’s a philosopher I like a lot, Deleuze. He said, ‘People shouldn’t be trees, people should be roots.’ Roots can go very far, whereas a tree can be cut down. Growing in the soil, underground -- that kind of change, I feel Lostgens is taking that approach. Grassroots.” Yeoh’s words on roots are a good starting point for considering the impact of creative hubs in Malaysia. Roots may not be visible from the surface, but they can have a wide ranging impact, extending their tendrils in unseen ways.

In these next sections, we will discuss the intangible and invaluable impact of creative hubs, as well as their more measurable impact on local economies and contexts.

Comment by OVEPI on February 4, 2024 at 11:03am

CO-WORKING SPACES

In the past five years, several standalone coworking spaces have opened in Malaysia, particularly in the capital city. These co-working spaces attract freelance workers, as well as small businesses, particularly tech start-ups.

Some co-working spaces offer networking sessions, and also double up as venues for talks and workshops. However, the day to day experience of a co-working space is largely functional: people rent a desk or office space in order to use the facilities.

At their core, co-working spaces are flexible. They offer short-term tenancies and as a result, the community of a co-working space is always changing. This affects the interaction between members, and between the space and the public.

A creative hub, on the other hand, tends to encourage some kind of long-term investment and interaction between its members, even if the interaction occurs online. A creative hub will also offer its members a platform to reach the wider public.

Creative hubs may contain co-working spaces, and some co-working spaces can be creative hubs. But the two terms are not always interchangeable.

Uppercase at APW, in Kuala Lumpur, is an example of a co-working space that is part of a creative hub. APW is a printing factory that, since

2014, has become repurposed as a venue for the arts and a hub for independent, small-scale restaurateurs and other creative businesses.

Uppercase is a co-working space located in the factory loft, where desks and rooms are rented out by graphic designers, architects, tech start`ups and freelancers. Left to right: Nazir Harith Fadzilah, co-founder of Rumah Khizanat, and Mohd. Jayzuan, founder of Projek Rabak.

Comment by OVEPI on February 4, 2024 at 11:02am

5 Kilang Bateri exterior

We surveyed and interviewed creative hubs based in a range of physical spaces, both privately owned and rented. The locales include a small shoplot in downtown Kuala Lumpur, a space on repurposed industrial “brownfield” land, and a residence amid lush greenery on the outskirts of a village, to name a few. Then there are the hubs which exist mostly through online activities, with members meeting in cafés or other public spaces when they meet at all.

In Malaysia, the consideration of space is something that is inescapable. Those of us who live in the capital city are entrenched in a daily battle with the urban jungle: from traffic jams to flooded roads and intermittent bursts of haze in the air. The landscape shifts quickly, as new developments replace old and sometimes cherished buildings.

The shock of the new has been dulled to a kind of weary acceptance, as megatowers are planned even as Kuala Lumpur creaks with the effort of cranes. Both a historic school and prison have become commercial shopping centres. But a citizen movement of heritage preservation has become a vocal part of the backlash, gaining strength and visibility in recent years in cities across Malaysia. Deforestation and the logging of indigenous lands have also become high profile news items. In this context, the politics of space must be considered in any mapping project.

Who has a space? Why is it located in a particular place? For those who don’t have spaces, why don’t they have spaces?

Among the creative hubs we interviewed, there is a sense that several founders feel somewhat at the fringes: tucked away, in obscure neighbourhoods or in upper shoplots. Sometimes this is a conscious choice, and sometimes it is circumstantial. Some of these hubs may succeed in becoming centres in years to come, but they know that these centres will have to be built from scratch, with blood, sweat and tears.

The commercial heart of Kuala Lumpur is a monopoly of luxury hotels and shopping malls. In this kind of setting, creative hubs are a much-needed counterpoint: providing services to communities, a sense of belonging, and personal development. At the same time, many of them struggle to survive.

Outside of Kuala Lumpur, the opportunities may be greater. Some creative hubs can be seen as catalysts for their surroundings. In George Town, Ipoh and Johor Bahru, creative hubs have brought economic benefits to places that were previously perceived as being “dead”, as young people left for the capital.

In East Malaysia, creative hubs look set to focus local talent, providing a platform that allows young creatives to thrive without needing to be based in West Malaysia. Yet in Kota Kinabalu and Kuching, hub managers know that they must develop their West Malaysian connections in order to grow the scene in their own hometowns.

Visibility is important. In our research, we found that many creative hubs feel that the wider Malaysian public is apathetic to their work, indeed towards the arts. If spaces for the arts were more visible and more central, how might that slowly shift the perception of the arts?

Comment by OVEPI on February 2, 2024 at 10:51pm

CO-WORKING SPACES

In the past five years, several standalone coworking spaces have opened in Malaysia, particularly in the capital city. These co-working spaces attract freelance workers, as well as small businesses, particularly tech start-ups.

Some co-working spaces offer networking sessions, and also double up as venues for talks and workshops. However, the day to day experience of a co-working space is largely functional: people rent a desk or office space in order to use the facilities.

At their core, co-working spaces are flexible.

They offer short-term tenancies and as a result, the community of a co-working space is always changing. This affects the interaction between members, and between the space and the public.

A creative hub, on the other hand, tends to encourage some kind of long-term investment and interaction between its members, even if the interaction occurs online. A creative hub will also offer its members a platform to reach the wider public.

Creative hubs may contain co-working spaces, and some co-working spaces can be creative hubs. But the two terms are not always interchangeable.

Uppercase at APW, in Kuala Lumpur, is an example of a co-working space that is part of a creative hub. APW is a printing factory that, since 2014, has become repurposed as a venue for the arts and a hub for independent, small-scale restaurateurs and other creative businesses.

Uppercase is a co-working space located in the factory loft, where desks and rooms are rented out by graphic designers, architects, tech start`ups and freelancers in Malaysia both flourish and struggle, at the same time. They flourish because there is a hunger for creativity and also for connections, which means that hubs can spring up quickly out of necessity or desire. However, whether those hubs continue beyond a few years is less certain.

Comment by OVEPI on February 2, 2024 at 10:51pm

(Con't from above) The hubs we interviewed in-depth are either established, having been in continuous operation for several years, or they are emerging hubs, with a plan to be established and continuous. However, there are many more kinds of hubs that are in between.

For example, recent years have seen retail and café spaces take on a new angle that could fit with the idea of a “creative hub”. While these primarily focus on selling products or food, they also host events such as exhibitions and talks. Examples include AweGallery, a venue attached to the café Awesome Canteen in Petaling Jaya, Selangor; and DR.inc, a café that sells artisan goods by Malaysian designers and also hosts workshops in silkscreen printing and other crafts in Kuala Lumpur. China House in George Town, Penang, is a café, restaurant and bar that provides space for open mics and music performances, as well as exhibitions.

Another variation of this format are small groups who get together to organise events. For example POW Ideas, a rising star of the Malaysian architecture and design scene, has recently started organising talks and film screenings about design.

Although these talks may only be organised for the period of a year or so, they also become spaces for networking and future collaborations.

As mentioned above, festivals have also played a large role in the development of the arts, and so can also be seen as a kind of “creative hub”. In 2002, an independent media company in Kuala Lumpur decided to start a festival to bring together people from different art scenes. The result was Urbanscapes, a festival which is still being held 15 years later. The festival combines live music shows with visual art, craft bazaars, fashion and more.

In terms of location, our case studies have covered various cities in Peninsular Malaysia: Kuala Lumpur, Petaling Jaya, Ipoh, George Town and Johor Bahru.

Unfortunately, due to time constraints, we did not include case studies from East Malaysia. However, two informal interviews were carried out with Tamu Tamu Collective from Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, as well as HAUS KCH in Kuching, Sarawak.

Malaysians speak a variety of languages. Two of our case study interviews were carried out in Bahasa Malaysia, one in Chinese and the rest in English.

Comment by OVEPI on January 29, 2024 at 3:05pm

We added “event organiser” as a hub type because creative hubs in Malaysia are often tied to events such as festivals. Many festivals have been the means for connecting creatives for the purposes of collaboration, supporting the arts, as well as impacting their cities. Even though these events may only last a weekend or a month each year, it would be remiss to overlook their part in Malaysia’s arts scene “Art centre” was replaced with the options of “event space / performance venue” and “gallery”.

There are very few – if any – places that define themselves as art centres in Malaysia. Places like theatres and galleries can be broadly called art centres, but not in the same way that this term is used in the UK, where “art centres” include varied elements such as a cinema, café and exhibition space all under one roof.

MAKERSPACES

“Makerspace” was replaced with the broader term “workshop”, since “makerspace” is closely associated with digital and technological innovation. Makerspaces, also known as hackerspaces, are driven by a movement of hands-on learning and DIY creation through digital tools such as 3D printing, robotics and coding.

This movement has largely grown from the USA. MIT established the Fab Foundation in 2009 and created Fab Labs, a global blueprint and network for makerspaces. Various public institutions, such as libraries, started their own makerspaces.

The number of makerspaces around the world is growing. However, makerspaces in Malaysia are still fairly new and rare. In Malaysia, one example of a makerspace is KakiDIY, which currently has two branches – the MCMC myMaker IOT Lab (located within the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission in Cyberjaya), and KakiDIY @ The Garage KL.

KakiDIY was founded by Johnson Lam in 2014. It hosted the SEA Makerthon in 2016, and regularly works with schools and universities on student maker contests. With a focus on recycling and upcycling, KakiDIY provides workshops and facilities for 3D printing, roboticsband drone production, papercraft and more. (Con't Below)

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