A Singapore prize that honours the city-state’s most innovative ideas in technology, health and philanthropy has been expanded to include a new category for social innovation. The winner of the inaugural “Earthshot” prize will receive a grant of up to S$200,000.
The inaugural award was won by Professor John Miksic, a leading British historian of Asia and a former chair of the National University of Singapore (NUS) East Asian Institute. He had written a book on how Singapore developed into the first Asian power, and its role in the world.
The prize was introduced in 2014 to support NUS’ SG50 programme in celebration of the nation’s 50th anniversary. The $50,000 prize is awarded by the NUS Department of History. The judges say they were impressed by the finalists’ ability to make the complexities of Singapore’s history accessible to non-academic audiences.
NUS professor Kishore Mahbubani, who heads the jury panel, said he would like to see more creative works of historical significance enter the competition in the future. He added that NUS might also consider expanding the categories for the prize to include fiction, movies or comics, as these mediums can be more effective in reaching out to a larger audience than books.
A number of shortlisted works have a personal slant, and eschew the view of history as a record of big movers and shakers. For example, Kamaladevi Aravindan’s novel Sembawang (2020, available here) details life in the estate of the same name over five decades.
This year, there were 49 submissions for the prize from a mix of local and international authors. The panel of judges included academics from NUS, arts and literary figures, museum curators and history teachers and curriculum developers. The judges also took into account the reader vote for the Reader’s Favorite award, in which people could select their favorite among the shortlisted titles online.
It is not clear how many tickets were sold for the Group 2 prize, which was split among 12 winning tickets. The winner must claim the prize within 30 days of the draw at the Toto booth in Singapore Pools headquarters or via its app.
It is not clear how the winner will spend the prize money, but it could go towards the purchase of a car. The organisers of the lottery did not provide details on how the winning ticket was bought or who it belonged to. It is illegal to conduct gambling promotions in Singapore, but prize promotions are exempt from this law when they meet certain criteria. These include that a participant does not pay to participate in the promotion; participation is voluntary; the conditions are clearly stated; and there is no psychological pressure on participants to buy products or services promoted. This is according to the Betting and Sweepstake Duties Act. It’s not clear if the winning ticket was purchased online, but the organisers have been asked to clarify. This is the largest prize ever won in a single Toto draw in Singapore.