After a year-long hiatus, NUS Arts Festival returns with renewed vigour and purpose, this time themed around Crossroads. Inspired by how the arts acts as a space for the intersection of identities, perspectives, and forms in challenging, inventive new ways, the student-driven festival also celebrates both the university’s diverse student arts groups and seasoned practitioners. With Crossroads, the festival aims to present a journey into the unfamiliar, as the arts leave the confines of traditional performance venues, transforming known spaces around campus into sites of creation and discovery, drawing on Southeast Asia’s rich cultural heritage and abundant talent.

Highlights of this year’s festival include Ku Kelek, Ku Dukung by NUS Ilsa Tari. Inspired by the idiom ‘Yang lama dikelek, Yang baharu didukung’ (“the old is carried, the new is embraced”), the performance explores the interplay of ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’. This interdisciplinary production honours the past and engages the present, encouraging audiences to embrace a balanced worldview. Central to its narrative is the concept of adat (customs), it examines how cultural practices evolve while staying relevant. Featuring a blend of movement, live music, and spoken Malay poetry with Rumah Rima, it includes guest musicians Luqman Hakim, Nazri Johari, and Lenny Karmila, who will reinterpret traditional sounds. Together, these elements create a thought-provoking celebration of tradition and innovation.

At OVERDRIVE, watch as NUS Cultural Activities Club (CAC), the NUS Arts Production Crew (NAPC), NUS Amplified, NUS Voices, STUDYO, and NUS Makers’ Market collaborate for a two-day arts carnival that celebrates NUS’ spirit of creativity, collaboration, and camaraderie. ​A sensory explosion of art in motion, OVERDRIVE comprises stirring performances by NUS Amplified, NUS Voices, and STUDYO, and work by talented student artists at the Makers’ Market and other exhibits.

NUS Wind Symphony presents Marco Polo – The Winding Road​, a symphonic odyssey through pivotal moments in history where individuals or civilisations stood at a crossroads. The concert aims to capture the vibrant splendour of pivotal events in history through the evocative power of music. The repertoire for the evening includes Marco Polo – The Cathay Years by Luis Alarcon and the world premiere of a specially-commissioned piece by Singapore’s Benjamin Yeo. Presenting a unique fusion of sound of instruments from the East and West, the performance will be conducted by Maestra Pamornpan Komolpamorn, Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra’s resident conductor and music director of the Mahidol University College of Music.

Stage Fright takes us back to the year 2000, where a theatre group rehearsing an upcoming production at the Old Science Library vanished an hour before their opening night, leaving no trace behind. This incident has remained unsolved to this day, with a venue abandoned and a play unstaged. Two decades later, a team of paranormal investigators return to the site of this mysterious disappearance, determined to uncover the truth. In this site-specific play by NUS Stage, in collaboration with NUS Electronic Music Lab and nuSTUDIOS Film Productions, the audience will embark on a bone-chilling adventure to solve the mystery. Using the seven deadly sins as a springboard for the devised script, Stage Fright! promises a night in the library where stories untold come alive.

Join the Centre for the Arts (CFA), NUS Office of Student Affairs (OSA), students and mentors as NUS Arts Festival makes a triumphant return, and show the world how the arts continues to unite, uplift, and inspire, in this celebration of creativity and eclecticism.

NUS Arts Festival 2025 runs from 13th February to 11th April 2025. Full lineup and more details available here