Blog Review - Singapore Teddy & Friends Show 2018

This was our first time hosting a Teddy Bear Show. It took us a lot of courage and determination to organise such an event, with zero experience.

The main objective of the event was to promote appreciation for toy making and to build a connection between the human touch and the art of Teddy Bear making. The show’s main focus was Teddy Bears, which are deemed to be soft sculptures that most people can associate easily, as they hark back to fond childhood memories.

Many years ago, we used to have a Singapore Teddy Bear Show annually, however, the organiser decided to discontinue due to personal reasons. We decided to revive this event again, because it had given fond memories to many collectors and Singapore needs an event like this, to encourage more people to learn and appreciate the art of Teddy Bear and toy making.

At first, we had a difficult time finding artists to participate and at the same time, we have to search for an appropriate venue accessible for the public to come to the event. Besides these, there were also many hidden costs involved such as venue, tables and chairs rental, publicity expense, website maintenance, printing expense and part-time helpers to facilitate the event.

With all these, this event was a gamble which involved a high risk of losing money because we had no expertise, no sponsors or help to do our first show. To make things worst, Wayne was unemployed during that time when he started his shop - Wayneston Studios.

Our decision was to continue because it could be one last chance for us to try organising this event as this could be the only juncture we have spare time to plan and execute the show.

In the middle half of the year, things took a turn for the better, when several overseas artist friends came forward to help and support the event. This gave us motivation and encouraged us to make things work together.

We spent a lot of time building our own website, creating a Facebook page and sending many Press Releases to the media. As the show got closer, we had our tables fully booked and garnered a total of 24 International Artists from 12 different countries namely Australia, Estonia, Germany, Japan, Malaysia, Myanmar, Russia, Taiwan, UK, Ukraine, USA, and Singapore!

Tatiana Scalozub (Ukraine)

June Su Nandar Naing ( Myanmar)

Maki Manabe and Kazumi Kumamoto (Japan)

Colleen Spies (USA)

Betsy Toh and Claresta Lim (Singapore)

Karen Wei and Lin Yuan-Zeng (Taiwan)

Esther Lee (Singapore)

Anna Potapova (Russia)

Margaret Burke (Australia)

Katrina Bittar (USA)

Kristina Lemeshko (Ukraine)

Maria Filatova-Chan (Estonia)

Marina Osetrova on the right (Russia)

Wayne Lim (Singapore)

We also even invited Artists to conduct workshops on Friday for the public to sign up. We had overwhelming response for all the workshops and some of them were even fully booked! We were pleased to see parents and children both having a great time bonding while participating in this event and we received more requests to have more variety for this coming year's show.

Inuka Workshop by Margaret Burke

Let's make Dolly Shoes Workshop by Carmel Ooi

Inuka Bear Workshop by Margaret Burke

Hagire-Chan Workshop by Maki Manabe

Needle Felting Cat Brooch with Colleen Spies

Our event last year was held at the Visual Arts Centre, located next to Dhoby Ghaut MRT Station. On Saturday and Sunday which was the main event, we had more than 350 visitors. Among the artists, we had several local new artists joining us namely Vanessa Chin, Geam Y S, Kelly Tan, Rachel Ting, Nicole Ding, Joanne Lee who has been making bears for less than a year. Each of them managed to create more than 10 Teddy Bears to display at the show.

New Artists, Geam Y S (Singapore) and Vanessa Chin (Malaysia)

New Artist, Kelly Tan (Singapore)

New Artist, Joanne Lee

New Artist, Rachel Ting (Singapore)

Besides Teddy Bears and Art Dolls, we also showcased bear making supplies with a wide selection of Fabrics, Joints, and Eyes for making your own Teddy Bears. We also received positive feedback from the collectors at the show, with many expressing their appreciation at the works. Some of them even adopted several Teddy Bears and Dolls from our artists.

Dinner with the participating artists

We were pleased that the event was a resounding success and we decided to continue the show again this year. We will have several artists returning and we have already booked a new venue at "Our Tampines Hub" which is twice the size of the Visual Arts Centre. We hope this year, we could welcome even more artists and visitors to the event.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank our family members and volunteers for offering their help. From the bottom of our hearts, we thank each and everyone who came to visit our show and we hope you will continue to support our event this year. More information and details for this year's event is below.

Singapore Teddy & Friends Show 2019

Dates: 16 & 17 November 2019

Venue: Our Tampines Hub, Function Room #2-05

Website: https://sgteddyandfriendsshow.com


P.S Calling for all Artists, if you are interested to join us in this year's event. Kindly email to info@sgteddyandfriendsshow.com and we will stay in touch with you.

Cheers,
Wayneston Studios & Team