The Asia Pacific Network for Cultural Education and Research (ANCER) is the first network of its kind. An initiative of LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore, the network was formed in 2011 as a way to stimulate and develop inquiry and research primarily in the field of arts/cultural management and cultural policy. ANCER emerged from a need to contribute to the development of thought leadership in the cultural education sector in the region of the Asia Pacific.
Reflecting the dynamism and fluidity of the arts, cultural and creative fields, ANCER strives to maintain a system that functions free of bureaucracy, and functions as a project-based network of arts and culture researchers, academics, and practitioners. ANCER fulfills its objective of knowledge sharing and dissemination through its two core programmes: the ANCER Lab and bi-annual ANCER Conference.
Contributors and participants in the ANCER platforms are a diverse group of artists, arts managers, cultural policy officers, academics, public intellectuals, students and others who consider themselves to be part of arts/creative ecosystems in the region. They come from education institutions, arts and civic organisations, artistic and creative collectives, or work independently.
LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore, holds the role of network coordinator and the administrator of the core ANCER programmes. The activities of ANCER are overseen by an informal advisory team from different countries: Venka Purosthoman, Provost, LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore; Jerry C. Y. Liu, President, Taiwan Association of Cultural Policy Studies, and Professor & Director Graduate School of Arts Management and Cultural Policy, National Taiwan University of Arts; Sonny Rustiadi, Institut Teknologi Bandung, Indonesia; Phloeun Prim, Executive Director, Cambodia Living Arts.
ANCER has associations with other networks from similar fields: the Taiwan Association of Cultural Policy Studies (TACPS), ENCATC – the European network on cultural management and policy, and the U.S.-based Association of Arts Administration Educators (AAAE).
The inaugural ANCER Conference in 2012 was a small gathering of representatives from arts and cultural management programmes in universities from Thailand, Australia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, as well as a representative from ENCATC, the European network on cultural management and policy.
ANCER organized its first international conference in 2014, “New Voices, Current Perspectives: Arts Management, Policy and Development in Asia”, at LASALLE College of the Arts. Featuring keynote presentations by Dr Farish Noor, Associate Professor at Nanyang Technological University, and Mr Amnol Vellani, Founder and former Executive Director of the India Foundation for the Arts, the conference included panels entitled ‘Cultural Policy in East Asia’ and ‘Visions for Education in Arts and Culture’, a Young Cultural Policy Researchers session and a World Cafe discussion featuring all conference participants on Asia-Europe cultural co-operation, organised in partnership with ENCATC and the Creative Networks initiative of the Asia-Europe Foundation.
In 2016, the third ANCER Conference was organised by Cambodian Living Arts in Phnom Penh, attracting 102 delegates from 20 countries. Entitled “Vitality & Viability: Arts Ecosystems in Asia”, the conference featured keynote speeches by Huot Dara, CEO of Phare Performing Social Enterprise, and Margaret Shiu, founder of Bamboo Curtain Studio in Taiwan.
Since then, there have been ANCER collaborative projects. These included the ANCER session, “Cultural Resistance, Art Activism and Community-Engaged Art Practice: New approaches in Asia” in the 2016 International Symposium on Cultural Trajectories: Cultural Governance, Global Mobility and Actions, organized by the National Taiwan University of the Arts’ Network for Cultural Education and Research and Taiwan Association for Cultural Policy Research (TACPS), and the ANCER Research Camp, “Collective Creative Practices in Southeast Asia” convened by faculty from the Arts Management and Design departments of LASALLE College of the Arts in November 2016.
In June 2018 an ANCER meeting was held in Singapore to discuss current and future issues in arts management in the region, bringing in participants from Vietnam, Thailand, Hong Kong, Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan, Japan, and Cambodia.
As of 2019, the two core programmes of ANCER are the ANCER Lab, an annual travelling ‘conversation’ series focusing on matters of policy and cultural management, and the biannual ANCER Conference.
For more information, please email: coordinator@ancernetwork.org.