By Tara Tan, Arts Reporter

THE Singapore Arts Festival is wooing schools in a big way this year.

Besides moving the festival dates a week forward to coincide with the last two weeks of the school term, it is also offering arts education workshops and talks to students under a new initiative called Fest Connect.

The response has been enthusiastic, with 4,300 students from 13 schools already signed up for the arts education programmes.

Festival director Goh Ching Lee said: 'Previously, when we had the festival in the middle of the school holidays, we thought it meant that students will be free to attend performances.

'But we also realised that we were not able to integrate structurally with the schools.'

Raffles Institution has booked 450 tickets to award-winning South African musical The Magic Flute - Impempe Yomlingo, the single largest school booking.

The students will also attend the corresponding Fest Connect workshop called Opera a la carte: Festival Special on The Magic Flute - Impempe Yomlingo.

Mayflower Secondary has booked a total of 360 tickets to five festival shows, while Tampines Junior College booked 209 tickets to six productions. Fest Connect is part of the annual festival's outreach programme.

At a press conference yesterday, the National Arts Council said there would be 400 free outreach performances all over the island during the month-long festival, which kicks off on May 15.

These performances complement the 25 ticketed productions in the festival's core programme.

Council chief Lee Suan Hiang said the outreach programme aimed to reach out to the whole spectrum of the population.

He said: 'One in three Singaporeans is an arts goer. We have to reach out to the other two-thirds of the population. So we bring the arts to their doorsteps.'

This year, the council is working with 18 partners to stage shows in 32 venues in different parts of Singapore. These include the Marina Barrage. The festival will open there with Helios II by French theatre company La Compagnie Malabar. Huge mechanical insects will be let loose in this light and sound spectacle.

Closing the festival will be Crackers?, a fireworks, music and multimedia projection extravaganza by The World Famous group from Britain, at the open field behind the Yishun bus interchange on June 13 and 14.

For more information on the Singapore Arts Festival's outreach programme, log on to www.singaporeartsfest.com

This article was first published in The Straits Times.