Starring Role for Spiderman in Singapore: To Save Energy & the Planet

Spiderman comes to Singapore for Earth Hour (29 March) and sustainability takes centre stage as i Light Marina Bay 2014 (7 to 30 March) promises a spectacular showcase of light and colour along the Marina Bay waterfront. The unique Festival will be powered by energy savings from the ‘Switch Off, Turn Up’ campaign that runs in tandem with the three-week Festival. It ends with a collaborative effort to coincide with WWF’s Earth Hour. SASA is the sustainability consultant for the event and campaign, as well as supporting WWF and Earth Hour.  Read More

Spider-Man and stars to lead WWF’s largest Earth Hour event from Singapore

WWF Reports (24 February 2014):

Singapore – the home of Earth Hour, leads groundbreaking global campaign to empower people across the world to “Use Your Power” and save the planet

WWF-Singapore today announced the director, producers, and cast of the highly anticipated upcoming motion picture The Amazing Spider-Man 2 will be coming to Singapore to celebrate this year’s global flagship event for Earth Hour, the world’s largest environmental grassroots movement, to be held at The Float@Marina Bay on Saturday March 29 at 8:30PM, putting the country at the heart of Earth Hour celebrations worldwide.

Spider-Man will join the film’s stars Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, and Jamie Foxx in the event, helping to switch off the lights across Singapore’s signature Marina Bay skyline.

Spider-Man was recently announced as the first Super Hero ambassador for Earth Hour. Traditionally, the lights out activity has been a symbolic act of one’s commitment to saving the planet and conserving the environment. This year on Saturday March 29, Singapore’s iconic Marina Bay area will be plunged into darkness from 8:30PM to 9:30PM, making this Earth Hour event one of the world’s largest ever.

“Earth Hour is a movement that is driven by the power of the civic society and the ordinary man on the street. This year we are inspiring everybody to use his/her power and become a Super Hero by driving a positive change for the planet,” said Ms Elaine Tan, CEO of WWF-Singapore. “Earth Hour in Singapore will empower everybody to pledge and commit to one or more of the four key initiatives that WWF-Singapore is pushing forward to help make Singapore a sustainable city. With the collective power of each person in Singapore, we can all help drive the positive change and be the ambassadors of sustainability.”

“Spider-Man is the first Super Hero ambassador for Earth Hour and we are thrilled that he will join us for our global celebration in Singapore. Since moving to Singapore, one of the world’s greatest hub cities, Earth Hour has positioned itself in the region with a rapidly growing digital presence that has helped power our movement. Earth Hour Blue, the world’s first crowdfunding platform for the planet, enables an everyday action that can inspire individuals to do something so powerful from the palm of their hand,” said Mr Andy Ridley, CEO and Co-Founder of Earth Hour.

Considering Singapore’s massive carbon footprint and urban consumption patterns, WWF Singapore has launched a huge on-the-ground and online campaign for four key action initiatives and is urging everybody to pledge and commit to turning their air-conditioning up by one degree, switching to LED lighting, using fewer plastic bags and taking shorter showers. Individuals, educational institutions and public and private organisations can, therefore, all pledge their support for WWF-Singapore’s sustainability efforts at the pledging microsite: http://earthhour.wwf.sg

WWF-Singapore is targeting to collect about 20,000 pledges and is urging the people of Singapore to do their bit by pledging to make this collective effort a success.

Earth Hour 2014’s “Use Your Power” campaign kicked off earlier in mid-February with the launch of an Instagram competition for students in Singapore, inviting youths to showcase how they could be Super Heroes and use their powers to save the planet.

This year’s Earth Hour 2014 will be graced by Ambassador Burhan Gafoor, Chief Negotiator for Climate Change, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and will showcase world-class dance and percussion performances and several home grown bands. The lights off will also coincide with the culmination of Urban Redevelopment Authority’s (URA) iLight Marina Bay festival, thereby making this year’s Earth Hour celebration in Singapore, a remarkable visual treat.

WWFSingapore is also delighted to announce that WWF International Director General Designate Marco Lambertini will attend the Singapore event.

In addition to the lights off event, WWF-Singapore has also announced its first crowdfunding project on the Earth Hour Blue platform. The project called Stop the Killing! aims to stop animal trafficking in Southeast Asia.

“Southeast Asia is an illegal wildlife trade hotspot, with surging demand for animal parts in the region. With this crowdfunding campaign, we are making a very bold and strong effort of bringing down the numbers of wildlife crimes in the region,” said Ms Elaine Tan. “We are very happy to see organisations coming together and going beyond the hour to pledge their own initiatives to save the planet. This year, Marina Bay Sands has taken the lead locally with their commitment as a business to turn their air conditioning one degree up, conserve freshwater, reduce the use of plastic bags and switch to LED lights. Commitment to actions like these are true to the spirit of Earth Hour, and a genuine reflection of business best practices.”

Earth Hour 2014 in Singapore has been made possible with the support of URA – the Official Venue Partner for The Float@Marina Bay, National Environment Agency (NEA), National Climate Change Secretariat (NCCS) and Marina Bay Sands, the Associate Partner for Earth Hour 2014.

The Major Sponsor for this year’s Earth Hour campaign in Singapore is Singapore Post, while IKEA and NTUC FairPrice are the Sponsors. The Official Radio Stations are Hot FM91.3, Kiss 92FM and UFM 100.3. Media partners are Clear Channel, SMRT and SMRT Media. Other partners include Energy Floors, The Hoffman Agency, Kevin Ou Photography, Leica, The Singapore Scouts Association and Yahoo! Singapore, the Official Online Partner for Earth Hour 2014.

Earth Hour is the world’s largest environmental campaign, and is run in over 154 countries and 7,000 cities from Singapore.

Supporting Quotes:

•             Kevin Teng, Director of Sustainability, Marina Bay Sands: “Sands Eco 360 is more than just a corporate sustainability programme – it is part of Marina Bay Sands’ DNA and drives the ways in which we operate our business and engage with our community. We will continue to deepen our outreach and spread the message of environmental conservation through working with like-minded people, organisations and the sustainability community including WWF and Earth Hour. Similar to previous years, Marina Bay Sands is lending our support and committing to ‘go beyond the hour’ as well as inspiring our employees, partners and suppliers to do the same. Besides switching off non-essential exterior lights during Earth Hour, we are taking concrete and measurable actions including helping WWF offset the carbon emissions from Earth Hour 2014, which could be as much as up to 14 tonnes. As part of Marina Bay Sands’ ongoing efforts with WWF, we are also pledging to further reduce our own carbon footprint by an additional 14 tonnes per month for the rest of the year. We hope that our long term commitment is able to raise awareness for core environmental issues and encourage others to adopt environmentally-friendly lifestyle habits.”

•             Jason Chen, Director of Place Management, Urban Redevelopment Authority: “We are pleased to continue our collaboration with like-minded partners such as WWF-Singapore. The message of sustainability is central to i Light Marina Bay and coinciding the Festival with Earth Hour amplifies the importance to save energy through individual and collective actions.”

About WWF

WWF – World Wide Fund for Nature is one of the world’s largest and most respected independent conservation organisations, with almost five million supporters and a global network active in more than 100 countries. WWF’s mission is to stop the degradation of the Planet’s natural environment and to build a future in which humans live in harmony with nature, by conserving the world’s biological diversity, ensuring that the use of renewable natural resources is sustainable, and promoting the reduction of pollution and wasteful consumption.

Source: www.wwf.sg

i Light Marina Bay 2014 illuminates with increased collaborations, greater interactivity, and more heART

28 installations to inspire crowds as Asia’s only sustainable light art Festival returns to Marina Bay next month

From URA 20 February 2014

A strong line-up of 28 sustainable light art installations by local and international artists will bring greater variety and interactivity for festival-goers of i Light Marina Bay 2014 next month.

Headlining the Festival are seven installations by invited artists, such as Celebration of Life by local artist Justin Lee, a projection piece on the ArtScience Museum façade that is a playful commentary on the role and value of traditional culture in our contemporary society, 1.26 Singapore created by US-based Janet Echelman, a large floating, fluid sculpture that imagines the force of nature of a tsunami created by the 2010 earthquake in Chile and resulted in the shortening of earth’s day by 1.26 microseconds, and CLOUD by Caitlind Brown and Wayne Garrett from Canada, an interactive sculpture comprising 5,000 new and recycled light bulbs. The rest of the art installations were selected through an open call last July.

This year, the Festival features a strong local line-up with about half, or 13 of the installations created by local artists. For the first time, the Festival will showcase installations by the Singapore University of Design and Technology (SUTD) and students from the Republic Polytechnic (RP). iSwarm, presented by SUTD, reacts to groups of visitors by detecting human presence and responds with its light pattern in the waters of Marina Bay. A Land of Reverie, a drawing using fluorescent paint and UV lighting created by Sheryl Ng and Nigel Ho from Republic Polytechnic, seeks to inspire visitors to play their part in creating an eco-friendly environment.

Five other local schools, Temasek Junior College, St Anthony’s Canossian Secondary School, Victoria School, Dunman High School and Singapore Polytechnic, have also come on board for the first time this year. #WeHeartLight, an installation by Light Collective from the United Kingdom, gathers the students to make simple light boxes that will be assembled together to form the final art work. Done through a series of workshops, the process of constructing this installation emphasises the importance of educating our future generation on sustainability.

Raising awareness of sustainability through art

Organised by the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA), the three-week Festival raises awareness on environmental sustainability issues through the theme ‘Light+HeART’. From 7 to 30 March, visitors can enjoy a visual feast specially curated by a three-member team from ONG&ONG.

Co-curator Ms Ong Swee Hong said, “Art is not passive; it has its own unique way of highlighting key social issues. Each installation in i Light Marina Bay 2014 acts as an agent of change, encouraging visitors to take action and make a difference in their own ways. With more installations that visitors can interact with, we hope to drive across the important message of having ‘heart’ for our environment, while creating a world-class platform for local emerging talents.”

Sustainability is a common theme for all 28 art works, which are further categorised into four genres:

Interactivity through Collaborations: Through the use of technology, these artworks question how humans behave in the environment and how we interact with light;

Collective is Strength: These artworks show the beauty of strength in unity, through the components of the installation or a group’s interaction with the installations to create symphonies of light;

Questioning Different Dimensions of Nature through our Hearts: Inspired by nature, these artworks relate to elements of nature, allowing visitors to see them in a different ‘light’; and

Sustaining Future Local Talents: i Light Marina Bay continues to be a platform for emerging local artists to showcase their artworks.

A platform for knowledge sharing on sustainable light art

The Festival will gather thought-leaders of sustainable light art and provide a knowledge exchange platform for its contributing participants and festival goers.

Visitors can look forward to a series of dialogues and forums by speakers like sociologist and art researcher Dr Sacha Kagan, TED speaker Professor Toby Cumberbatch, as well as local and international artists participating in the Festival, who will share their perspectives on light and art in today’s world.

In addition to the sustainable art light show, an associated energy saving campaign, called Switch Off, Turn up, will involve properties in Marina Bay and other parts of the city for three weeks. For this year, 52 properties have committed to participate, with the expectation that even more energy will be saved than in the previous 2012 event and campaign.

i Light Marina Bay 2014 will open nightly from 7 to 30 March 2014, 7.30pm to 11pm, around the Marina Bay waterfront. Admission is free.

Source: www.ilightmarinabay.sg