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National Community Engagement Programme (CEP) Dialogue 2015

About

The National Community Engagement Programme (CEP) is the predecessor of SG Secure, Singapore’s community response to the threat of terrorism.

The CEP was launched after the 2005 London bombings. The CEP involved building a network of people of all races and groups, including schools and businesses, that would hold the multiracial, multi-religious society together against the strains of a terror attack.

The Community Engagement Programme was coordinated by the CEP Secretariat at the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), and comprises five clusters led by the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth (MCCY), Ministry of Education (MOE), Ministry of Communications and Information (MCI), Ministry of Manpower (MOM), and the People’s Association (PA).

The annual National Community Engagement Dialogue 2015 was attended by about 550 grassroots, community and student leaders.

What we did

Each plenary segments was digitally graphic recorded “live” on one of four artboards. Each artboard could be individually projected on the screen when that segment was in session.

Over the course of the day, we organised on-the-fly the ideas from each segment/artboard into a bigger whole. The end result was this coherent “big picture” of the story and themes that emerged from the plenary conversations.

This experience of digitally graphic recording (way before the Apple Pencil existed, using a pen tablet and old Macbook that both weren’t mine) was a milestone in my personal growth as a visual practitioner. It was also my last and most major graphic recording assignment, before I left the public sector to explore new territories!

Here’s me posing with my work on the large screen, after the audience had left
and a few of us were hanging around celebrating the conclusion of the event.

How was the visual output used?

Beyond the National CEP Dialogue 2015, the graphic recording was featured in an interview with Mr Benny Lim, on “Rebooting Nation Building in Singapore.” Mr Lim is the former Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of National Development. The interview was published in Urban Solutions, Issue 10: Living with Diversity (Urban Solutions is a publication of the Centre for Liveable Cities, Singapore).

Graphic recording of the CEP Dialogue 2015, as featured in Urban Solutions Issue 10.

Some years after the National CEP Dialogue, I had a workshop participant (now a friend) who serendipitously came to know about me after his sister saw the graphic recording at the event. It’s amazing how graphic recording can draw people together! 🙂