The value of Noise Singapore has always been that beyond being an event that uncovers emerging talents; it is a platform designed to support and nurture them. A key component of the festival is the much sought-after apprenticeship programme (known as TAP), which pairs inexperienced and guidance-seeking aspirants with specially appointed mentors over a four-month-long period.

By May Lim – Objet Petit

At this year’s TAP, 23 top creative professionals including the likes of fashion photographer Geoff Ang, design and publishing editor Kelley Cheng, comic artist Troy Chin, and former Noise Singapore Award winner and Young Artist Award recipient Robert Zhao took under their wing a total of 70 promising young talents chosen from a pool of over 300 hopeful applicants. All paired mentors and apprentices spent four months working in their respective media (including design, illustration, and photography) on the Singapore Biennale theme of “If The World Changed”. As the programme comes to an end with the TAP exhibition now on show, the mentors and apprentices share that beyond the finale of this showcase, it was the lessons imparted and gained that were the most valuable takeaways.

By Gan Kah Ying – Takeover

In their mentorships, Troy Chin and Robert Zhao envisioned themselves playing specific guiding roles. Zhao shares that many of the questions his apprentices had were the very questions he faced himself years ago; so to him, he was there to support and point the way. As a published comic artist, Chin, on the other hand, saw himself playing the part of the editor – “whom [the apprentices] will have to work with in the future if they are getting published, and who will chase after them and make sure that they don’t fall behind”.

For most of the participants, the programme essentially involved regular meetings and discussions between mentors and apprentices, and for some, there were visits to galleries, museums, art colleges, studios and workshops for apprentices to gain first-hand experience of the day-to-day work of a creative practitioner.

By Lek Zhi Yang – Chasing Riches

Many mentors were also keen to show their apprentices the harsher realities of their professions. Chin, for example, made sure that his apprentices understood “how comic making is not simply sitting at a table and drawing”.

“There are so many other factors ranging from page layout, to print making, to multiple edits that contribute to the overall production and it can be frustrating to deal with errors and changes along the way,” Chin explains.

By Zen Teh – Unknowing

The exposure and guidance gained from the programme have been instrumental to the apprentices – Zen Teh (apprenticed under Zhao) sees it as “a turning point in [his] artistic career”, while May Lim (under Speak Cryptic) thought that it was the “process of sharing ideas and being able to find suitable people to bounce ideas off of [that were] very important”.

Clearly, many strong creative alliances have been formed but it was not only the apprentices who had something to gain. For mentor Kelly Cheng, who took on seven apprentices, the challenges were as much hers as they were her mentees.

“The challenge [was also] to teach them how to have a good concept and to translate that concept into a physical object… but because of the struggles we had together, it also became an interesting bonding session and I became close to them in the end,” says Cheng.

Noise Singapore: The Apprenticeship Programme exhibition is on till 1 September 2013 from 10am to 7pm daily (till 9pm on Fridays), at SAM at 8Q. Admission is free.