Muragacha was once a puppetry hub. Renowned art director and the pioneer of modern puppetry in Bengal, Raghunath Goswami, during a visit to Muragacha in the early 1970s, had said that the village was home to the largest colony of puppeteers in the world. There were fifty-five families practicing puppetry as a livelihood at the time; the figure is just twelve today. String puppetry, rod puppetry, and hand puppetry have a long history in Bengal. Their styles and puppets are different. String puppets weigh less and are moved with thin strings. They are made with cloth, papier-mâché, and sholapith. Their height, at the most, is two feet. The stage for a show must be ten feet long, six feet wide, and three feet high, with three sides covered. The puppeteer teams are like families. Everything, right from the script to lights, costumes, and sets are done in clockwork precision.

Hawker culture in Singapore comprises hawker centers, hawkers, and hawker food. It is a living heritage shared by those who prepare hawker food and those who dine and mingle over hawker food in “community dining rooms” called hawker centers. It encompasses people from all walks of life, a wide range of affordable multicultural food, and common shared spaces. While similar food practices can be found in neighboring countries and internationally, they each have their respective historical contexts, cultural influences, and sociocultural functions.\nHawker centers in Singapore are naturally ventilated premises that are accessible and integral to the everyday lives of people in Singapore. Hawker stalls, selling food from different cultures, usually line both sides of the center, with an open communal dining space in the middle. At a typical hawker center, one can often experience sights and sounds, such as the sizzling of wok fire and rising steam from boiling pots, as hawkers whip up freshly cooked, made-to-order dishes at their hawker stalls. It is common to hear friendly exchanges between hawkers and patrons in the various languages spoken in Singapore, over a bustling atmosphere as families, colleagues and friends chat and bond over hawker meals.

Mr Yeo Kirk Siang is currently the Director of the Heritage Research and Assessment Division (HRA) at the National Heritage Board (NHB) of Singapore. The division focuses on the research, documentation and commemoration of Singapore’s tangible heritage and the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage, in partnership with non-government organisations and public agencies. He is also the coordinator for the “Our SG Heritage Plan”, which outlines the broad strategies for the five years of Singapore’s heritage sector (2018 to 2022). Kirk Siang is currently a member of the Evaluation Body established under the UNESCO 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of ICH for the period of 2021 to 2024.

Nikhil Joshi is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Architecture at the National University of Singapore (NUS). Educated at the University of Pune (India), University of York (UK) and National University of Singapore (Singapore). His research interests include cultural heritage management; traditional building materials and techniques; and community participatory approaches. Before joining NUS, Nikhil worked and taught in India, UK, and Malaysia for over a decade. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, UK, and recipient of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings – Lethaby Scholarship, UK. He has been an active speaker in various conferences throughout the world and has several publications to his name. His main recent publications include Mahabodhi Temple at Bodhgaya: Constructing sacred placeness, deconstructing the ‘great case’ of 1895 (2019); Managing change: Urban heritage and community development in historic Asian cities (2018, edited); Community voices: Preserving the local heritage (2016); People + places: Exploring the living heritage of Songkhla old town (2016, edited)

The National Heritage Board (NHB) is a statutory board of the Singapore Government, governed under the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth (MCCY). First formed on 1 August 1993, the goals of the agency are to encourage the preservation and protection of historic environments relating to Singapore, and to promote the respect for and knowledge of historic environments. It also ensures that Singaporean heritage is accessible to all citizens, as well as to spread information about that heritage.

The Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) was set up in 1987 to fulfill late Smt. Indira Gandhi’s (former Prime Minister of India) idea of restoring the integral quality of a human being, fragmented by his diverse roles in cities, classes, ethnic groups, religions, traditions, and nationalities, to reconcile one’s material and spiritual needs, and enable one to be at peace with oneself and with society. The center was visualized as encompassing the study and experience of all the arts—each form with its own integrity, yet within a dimension of mutual interdependence, interrelated with nature, social structure, and cosmology. nIGNCA is based in New Delhi, situated on twelve hectares of prime land while the center itself houses one of the finest libraries in the country, a media production division, a cultural information center, an exhibition division, conference halls and twenty-four guest rooms. Regional centers are in Bangalore (South India), Varanasi (North India), and Guwahati (the Northeast India). The center has collaborative program with numerous national and international institutions and universities and its faculty is internationally trained.

Punjab Folk Art Centre is a non-governmental organisation (NGO). It was established in the year 2002. Punjab Folk Art Centre works in the area of Art & Culture. The organisation is familiarizing the people of Punjab at grass root level with their culture. The organisation operates in Gurudaspur and organizes many folk events to promote and preserve the rich cultural heritage and sports of this region.