Preface
LASALLE College of the Arts anchors creativity. In a world marked by profound change, creativity, imagination and courage accelerate opportunities to define the future. Our task is to prepare artists, designers, performers, researchers and cultural leaders to become enablers of their future.
We begin in Singapore, a thriving pulse of Southeast Asia. It is our ground and our vantage point from which we advance a distinctive contemporary arts education that brings arts practice, research and pedagogy into conversation with society through collaboration, experimentation and interdisciplinarity.
Crafting LASALLE 2026–2036: a prototype for the future is our commitment to how we will move and design our future strategically. We will build living ecosystems around our students by thinking, making, doing, questioning, testing, learning and acting. We will establish LASALLE as an intellectual arts hub where practice and research thrive and generate new knowledge. We will cultivate a culture of enterprise that gives our staff and students the agency, resilience and connections to create enduring value for themselves and the world around them.
Over the next decade, we will define what an arts institution can be: transforming minds, practising courageously and cultivating communities. We will protect what is distinctively LASALLE while reinventing it. We will not wait for the future—we will bring it into being from today.
Professor Venka Purushothaman
President
LASALLE College of the Arts, University of the Arts Singapore
Our purpose
We advance the transformative power of the arts by enabling students from all walks of life to embrace artistic experimentation, critical research and socially engaged practices. Together, we craft prosperous futures for the planet
Our ambition
LASALLE is the defining lead for contemporary arts education, shaping futures from Singapore to the world.
Introducing LASALLE College of the Arts
LASALLE is decisively human. We exist to bring meaning to a fast-moving Singapore through arts practice, pedagogy and research. The future requires imaginative artists, designers, performers, researchers and cultural leaders who work within complexity, build communities and give form to new possibilities.
At LASALLE, the arts are a catalyst for social, environmental and technological transformations. These transformations must be meaningful. As the arts realise their impact in relation to context, we engage the public in conversation. Beyond awards and accolades, we amplify stories of process, experimentation and artistic inquiry to bring people along.
Together, we crafted this strategy to sharpen our focus, navigate uncertainty and journey forward with purpose. Guided by our value principles, three strategic movements turn our ambition into action built from within to reach beyond.
LASALLE in context
Mapping Singapore on the world stage
Relationships connect us to the world—practice grounds us in our local context. We work from the heart of Southeast Asia: a dynamic region shaped by its own histories, heritages and emerging movements.
Singapore and its communities are our living research site where we collectively shape the discourse emerging from the region. We draw on Singapore’s multicultural situatedness, cutting-edge infrastructure and international ties to champion contemporary voices and carry our work to the world stage.
Advancing the University of the Arts Singapore
The 2022 establishment of the University of the Arts Singapore (UAS), the nation’s first arts university, represents a significant milestone in the development of the arts. As a founding member, LASALLE expands its well-established strengths to a broader national university platform.
LASALLE is shaped by its institutional distinctiveness and pride. UAS’s vision, mission and values undergird LASALLE’s significant contribution to the university: advancing contemporary arts education from Singapore, deepening the role of the arts in society and ensuring the nation’s seventh university is anchored in Asia and connected to the world.
The living strategy circle
© For Planet Strategy Lab
Strategy as methodology
We are crafting our strategy with a methodology that sets the tone for how we will work from now on: engaging in discussion, prototyping early and iterating fast. It is a live document. Over 200 staff members, students, Board members, international academics, industry partners and alumni participated in this process to help us find the right questions, not just the right answers. Collectively, we craft LASALLE’s strategy along building blocks that address different time horizons:
Value principles sit at the heart of LASALLE. They guide every decision we take and remain true for the next 10 years.
Strategic movements set our direction. They focus and position us over the next three to five years with clear and distinctive guiding commitments.
A set of strategic initiatives branches out of each movement. They turn direction into outcomes.
Strategic actions move initiatives forward. They form the operational heartbeat that brings our strategy to life.
The resulting living strategy circle retains our strategy’s shape over the long term while enabling adaptability within it. As we learn, we move resources where they create the highest value: for our students, our staff and Singapore.
This new way of working continues. It is how we debate, prototype and decide together. We use this strategy as the guiding document for assessing every decision in our work. It provides the common foundation for the continued negotiation of how we move forward as LASALLE.
Value principles
We care for emerging and established artists, designers and performers, as well as all staff and students. Together, we imagine what awaits beyond the unexpected and act on it through creative practices.
Our value principles are rooted in our founding values, ground our ambition, inform our decisions and guide our actions. Inclusive of the lives of everyone within and around LASALLE, they inspire us to transform minds, engage in courageous praxis and cultivate communities.
Transforming minds
Minds are transformed through the power of the arts. That transformation extends from the individual to society as a whole. Our experience as lifelong learners enables us to bring people along as we diverge from existing paths to create what is next. We stay curious at every stage of our practice to learn across disciplines, geographies and generations.
We give meaning to the contemporary by transforming minds.
Courageous praxis
Praxis is our way of practising, researching and engaging with the arts. Courage demands our willingness to embrace audacious imagination, experimentation under uncertainty and learning from failure. Together, we craft shared futures and act on them to keep society moving forward.
We give form to the contemporary through courageous praxis.
Cultivating communities
Communities are essential for arts practice, pedagogy and research. Cultivating them encompasses space, agency and care. While we provide resources, structures and sites, our communities take up agency by bringing in their knowledge, networks and creative energy. Together, we care—for ourselves, for others, for the environment.
We give space to the contemporary by cultivating communities.
Strategic movements
LASALLE’s strategy is brought to life through three strategic movements. Each movement is driven by a set of guiding commitments.
Our entrepreneurial mindset enables us to balance the courage to experiment under uncertainty with a commitment to financial resilience. Within this frame, the movements have the mandate, agency and ambition to shape the edge of technology, arts practice, pedagogy and research.
Movement 1
Living ecosystem
We transform LASALLE into a living ecosystem of relationships that adapts its physical, digital, organisational and social spaces to diverse student journeys as they evolve.
Movement 2
Intellectual arts hub
We establish a hub for contemporary creative and cultural practice where pedagogy and research converge to give rise to the LASALLE approach.
Movement 3
Enterprising culture
We build the entrepreneurial conditions for LASALLE to create sustainable value through regional and international connections.
Movement 1
Living ecosystem
We transform LASALLE into a living ecosystem of relationships that adapts its physical, digital, organisational and social spaces to diverse student journeys as they evolve.
Value emerges through the relationships between students, staff, alumni, academics and industries. These relationships form our ecosystem. Student journeys are the most tangible manifestation of this living ecosystem. They provide the primary lens through which we transform our systems, services, spaces and practices.
This movement connects physical, digital, organisational and social spaces. It recognises that important opportunities, valuable learning and organisational outcomes arise in between. Staff and students are not simply participants within the ecosystem but active contributors to its continuous evolution.
Guiding commitments
Centering the student journey as shared reference
We design our systems around people, not the other way round. We move from monolithic structures towards a modular architecture, shaped by a shared understanding of different student journeys.
We put user experience ahead of organisational complexity, and connection ahead of optimising one part at the expense of the whole. Continuously mapping our living ecosystem makes flows, interdependencies and responsibilities visible, letting us spot friction points, coordinate where it adds value and leave room for local judgement where it does not. This shared visibility opens up new collaboration across institutional boundaries.
Transforming digital systems and processes
Technology only transforms us when it is built around the people who use it. Digital tools need an adaptive architecture that is interconnected, not a copy of fragmented existing processes. This is what enables people, processes and services to work together instead of alongside each other.
We design and develop our platforms to support collaboration, experimentation and alignment. We choose adaptability, agency and autonomy over rigid structures and information flow over storage. Artificial intelligence helps us detect patterns in complexity, offer personalised solutions and streamline our development. The judgement stays ours at all times.
Designing evolving spaces that bridge communities
Spaces are home to interactions. They shape how learning, collaboration and new ideas emerge. That includes informal and in-between spaces, where unexpected encounters, exchange, unplanned learning and playful interaction can take shape. Such sites of experimentation strengthen our role as active participants in our living ecosystem.
We design spaces as evolving environments, not fixed infrastructure. They are continually renewed as the way we learn, work and gather evolves. This care for spaces goes beyond the campus. Our spaces connect to the neighbourhood, the city and the region, and double as a platform for engaging with communities, industry and cultural partners.
Building entrepreneurial capabilities
The people who underpin living systems keep them alive. This calls for an entrepreneurial mindset that is no longer constrained by silos but moves across Divisions and Schools, with the shared goal of sustaining our multifaceted value creation.
We build our people’s capability to organise entrepreneurially, so we can shape our fast-moving context together. This requires aggregating shared resources across the institution, building capacity for innovation and backing it with distributed mandates and decision-making authority.
Movement 2
Intellectual arts hub
We establish a hub for contemporary creative and cultural practice where pedagogy and research converge to give rise to the LASALLE approach.
At LASALLE, practice informs research, and research informs practice. Futures are not observed at a distance but generated and collectively negotiated in the present. Uncertainty serves as a constant reminder of the urgency of this continuous engagement.
Arts education and research converge in a circle of lifelong learning as new knowledge is created, shared, translated and nurtured. Our Schools enrich this circle with unique perspectives, refined methodologies and strong communities. Together, they bring creative practice to life.
By providing experimental spaces for applied education and research, we become a site where futures emerge as we give meaning, form and space to the contemporary.
Guiding commitments
Introducing a situated LASALLE approach
Clarity invites resonance. A decade of building capabilities in applied research has sharpened our skills and clarified our position. Our commitment enables us to take the next step and bring the LASALLE approach to the international discourse.
We work from our multicultural situatedness, amplifying the region’s voices by defining a research approach that connects with industry, academia and society. Balancing local heritages and planetary futures, we open a position that invites an authentic discourse, one the world leans in to engage with.
Advancing research as a core differentiator
Research enhances the transformative power of contemporary arts education. Only when we succeed in translating our insights across disciplines will creative practice live up to its potential.
We provide the structures and resources for applied research. By organising our activities as living labs that provide time for inquiry, uphold academic rigour and enable interdisciplinary collaboration, we deeply embed research within the systems and processes of LASALLE. Positioning research as a driver of our engagement and pedagogy builds momentum that strengthens our ties with leading research communities beyond our institution.
Evolving pedagogy from within our communities
Creative practice evolves through collective action. Communities engage in conversations, collaborate through experiments and interact during performances—they set ideas in motion. Communities are essential to bringing our work into society, but they cannot be prescribed from the top down. We build them from within.
Through our pedagogy, we curate physical and intellectual spaces that allow for experimentation, courage and iteration. We ground pedagogy and research in communities built around shared questions rather than isolated disciplines. This allows us to bridge divides and encourage collaboration beyond the classroom. By attracting, hosting and nurturing communities, we become a home for unusual talents with the capacity to transform minds.
Living up to lifelong learning
Learning unfolds along many paths. As technology reshapes creative practice, we need to continuously learn and unlearn. Student journeys no longer end at graduation but become lifelong learning journeys that open up a range of opportunities.
We evolve our linear understanding of learning into a circular one, encompassing current, past and future students and staff. By carefully recalibrating our programmes, we keep them at the edge of contemporary practice. At the same time, we enhance our programmes with a more modular educational offer that welcomes minds across vocations and generations.
Movement 3
Enterprising culture
We build the entrepreneurial conditions for LASALLE to create sustainable value through regional and international connections.
Enterprising culture creates value that aligns with our value principles, not value from scaling for growth’s own sake. It equips our students with the resilience and courage to build sustainable lives from their practice. It draws alumni back to campus as mentors, connectors, donors and storytellers. It makes us legible to industry and recognised internationally. It builds our financial resilience. Over time, continuous value creation transforms minds.
By enabling students, staff and alumni to act entrepreneurially, we encourage initiative, risk-taking and innovation. Together, we continue to expand and nurture the network that connects us to Singapore and the world.
Guiding commitments
Providing an entrepreneurial environment
Creative entrepreneurship sustains our work and enhances creative practices with agency and leadership. Embedded across programmes and study years, it enables our students to understand the mechanics of the real world. It lets them connect meaningfully and imagine beyond.
We provide an entrepreneurial environment where disciplines intersect and students grow by engaging in real-world contexts. While we protect students from premature market exposure, we actively connect them to promising opportunities. This results in graduates who are adventurous and resilient, ready to lead through uncertainty rather than wait for it to pass. They create meaning that holds up over time, launch creative ventures and address emerging challenges.
Deepening connections within our communities
Organisations are brought to life through the quality of their connections. We are no exception: our students and staff create value and receive it only when they are connected to the communities around them. An enterprising culture makes this possible: it nurtures existing connections and builds new ones within our context.
We expand and deepen local and international partnerships across industries as well as educational, cultural and public organisations. We recognise the people who carry this work: staff who mentor, alumni who return to teach, partners who open doors and donors who sponsor innovative ideas. We give this work capacity and resources, so it can grow. Among these connections, we emphasise our alumni. After graduation, we remain a connector, a platform and at times a launchpad. Through this, connections renew: today’s students become tomorrow’s mentors, donors and partners.
Amplifying our impact across the world
Sustainable arts practice unfolds its transformative impact through the resonance it generates in society. This applies to our students, alumni and staff: when we amplify their stories and our own, we build recognition that reaches beyond Singapore.
We tell these stories to engage regional and international audiences, learners and collaborators. Impact stories are inclusive: they go beyond highlighting outcomes to include process, experimentation and inquiry. Rooted in Singapore, we bring Southeast Asia’s cultural histories and emerging practices into conversation with the international cutting edge. This will draw exceptional international students, lecturers, researchers and creative professionals to us.
Sustaining our value creation
Financial resilience gives creative practice and arts education the room to take risks. The more we are recognised, the more impact we create. The more legacy we can show, the more we have available to offer potential donors, funders or partners. We need to consistently answer the following questions: which value do we create, for whom and when does it unfold?
In addition to the stable income from student fees and government grants, our Divisions and Schools develop additional value streams aligned with our purpose and ambition. Diversifying financial value streams allows us to explore new opportunities, take risks amid uncertainty and support what matters most even if it has not yet found its presence in the mainstream. We invest in the contemporary.
Being LASALLE
Crafting LASALLE 2026–2036 sets a direction for the decade ahead: A commitment to move LASALLE forward with purpose while continuing to transform and uplift lives through the arts. It is designed to be agile yet focused, allowing our priorities to evolve as the world around us changes.
The plan will unfold through three strategic cycles over the decade. Each cycle will bring together initiatives, actions and performance indicators that strengthen LASALLE from within, while responding to transformations in how we teach, learn and work, and to emerging developments in art, aesthetics, technology and society.
Over the next 10 years, LASALLE’s distinctive identity and ambition will be unmistakable in everything we do. We will continue to shape an institution that transforms minds, enables courageous practice and builds communities—an institution rooted in Singapore, connected to Southeast Asia and engaged with the world.
The measure of this strategy will ultimately not be the plan itself, but the institution we become. The strategic plan gives us direction. Our collective endeavour gives it life.
This plan is the work of LASALLE’s staff, students and Board members, guided by For Planet Strategy Lab, Zurich.
LASALLE College of the Arts
1 McNally Street, Singapore 187940
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