What happens when the people who make Singapore’s arts scene come together not to talk about their next project, but about how they are holding themselves and one another together? That is the question behind CITRUS fest 2026: Kacang Puteh, Care-Oke?, a ten-day festival taking place from 21 to 30 August at 42 Waterloo Street, in conjunction with the Singapore Night Festival. Commissioned by the National Arts Council’s Arts Resource Hub and curated by ground-up collective CITRUS practices, the second edition brings together more than 50 arts workers across 20 programmes to explore care not as another item on an already crowded checklist, but as something shared, practical and even joyful.

The festival arrives at a time when conversations around burnout, wellbeing and sustainability are becoming increasingly visible across Singapore’s arts sector, where many practitioners juggle multiple roles and projects to make a living. Rather than treating care as a private responsibility, CITRUS fest aims to bring different parts of the arts ecosystem into the same room, artists, producers, educators, audiences and others, to swap experiences, test ideas and consider what a healthier creative community might look like. Festival curator Chong Gua Khee describes the intention simply: when care becomes something people do together, “the labour is distributed”, making it lighter and creating more room for the arts to flourish.

That spirit is reflected in a programme that feels less like a conference and more like a gathering. Theatre director and educator Adib Kosnan’s No Compromises Needed: Crafting Work with Care uses real-life scenarios to unpack conflict, power dynamics and collaboration between directors, performers and production teams, while Take Care, Pls… Townhall for New Beginnings, led by theatre practitioners Cheryl Ho and Adeeb Fazah, turns the question of a sustainable artist life into a tongue-in-cheek townhall where participants form a mock “Taskforce” to debate what making a living in the arts could actually look like. Elsewhere, Turning the ‘P-Age’: Dreams on Accessibility offers a glimpse into a work-in-progress puppet theatre piece created by artists ranging from their 20s to their 60s, opening up a conversation about making accessibility both rigorous and creative.

Some of the festival’s most intriguing ideas happen outside the traditional theatre space. The Artists Village’s Tonight, we are a village recreates the spirit of the former S-11 coffee shop outside the Old National Library, once a familiar meeting point for arts workers, as a participatory installation in the courtyard of 42 Waterloo Street. It asks a deceptively simple question: what kinds of places do artists need to meet, linger, argue, dream and simply be together? Meanwhile, How to Smell Spirits?, presented with Objectifs, brings filmmakers Daniel Hui and Nishok into conversation about the realities of caring for themselves and their teams while working with emotionally demanding material.

And, fittingly, food and music become part of the conversation too. Opening gathering PONDOK: i want water, but the jar can’t hold, created by anthropos, draws on regional banquet traditions, serving dishes inspired by conversations with arts workers about survival, sustenance and comfort food, while inviting guests to contribute personal “relics” from moments when they needed care. The festival closes with Stone Soup Party by Post-Museum and artist Robert Guth, where rescued ingredients and vegetables brought by guests are transformed into a communal meal before the evening ends with karaoke. The result is a festival that treats care not as an abstract professional-development topic, but something that can happen over food, conversation, laughter, making things together — and, perhaps, a slightly off-key song.

CITRUS practices first piloted the festival in 2024 as part of Wellness Festival Singapore, also with a commission from the Arts Resource Hub. Since then, its publicly available resources on care practices have continued to be used by arts workers in Singapore and beyond. For this year’s edition, the collective plans to build on those conversations by commissioning new resource articles drawn from the festival’s insights, extending the exchange beyond the ten days in Waterloo Street. Admission is free, with selected programmes requiring registration, and selected online pre-festival sessions beginning from 12 August. For anyone curious about the people, relationships and often invisible labour that keep Singapore’s creative scene moving, CITRUS fest offers an unusually welcoming invitation: come along, pull up a seat, eat something, join the conversation and think about what it might mean to take better care of the people who make the culture we enjoy.

CITRUS fest 2026: Kacang Puteh, Care-Oke? runs from 21st to 30th August at 42 Waterloo Street, in conjunction with the Singapore Night Festival. For a full programme line-up, please visit the official website: citruspractices.sg Stay up-to-date with CITRUS fest 2026 at their Instagram: www.instagram.com/citrus.practices