LIVE! Singapore: big themes big questions

In his opening plenary at LIVE! Singapore Richard Evans, CEO of the Sydney Opera House talked about the Sydney Opera House as an audacious building, a nation’s town hall, an aspirational symbol built when Australia didn’t even have a major opera company. It’s a building of daring and bravery that has matured into a place both of exclusiveness in terms of presenting works of the highest quality and popularism in terms of accessibility to the broadest range of people that is still reaching out to new audiences in the digital world. But it was his appeal for arts leaders to aspire to be just as audacious when contemplating the future directions of the performing arts that stuck and was on the lips of everyone throughout the conference.