2025 Merdeka Award Talk Series #1: Profit Meets Performance: When Arts Means Business

AWANI

What does it really take to sustain a life in the arts?   In this honest and passionate exchange, Datuk Ramli Ibrahim, Tiara Jacquelina, and Bernard Chandran reflect on creative freedom, cultural purpose, and the realities of building a career. It’s a conversation on redefining success beyond fame and profit, with impact, patience, vision and soul at the core.  Watch the full conversation moderated by Low Ngai Yuen at Merdeka Award YouTube channel - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HRgKKTCziM   #AstroAWANI #MerdekaAwardTalkSeries

Transcript

00:00They see art as a powerful tool for nation building.

00:03In the pyramid of life, the arts and culture stays up in the front.

00:09Totally agree. We have to put the creation up, the freedom.

00:24When you talk about Prophet Mith's performance,

00:26I feel that the profit has got to be defined in a much wider sense.

00:32How does it profit the person, the nation in a bigger kind of way?

00:38Not just how much is going to be rich in terms of money and sense.

00:42It is the business of running arts rather than arts means business of making it bigger and bigger.

00:51For me, success is not about quantity in terms of how many people,

00:58how many viewership you get in your TikTok.

01:00You can't have the money and sense in that way in arts.

01:05But and yet in the pyramid of life,

01:07I think the arts and culture stays up in the front, right on top of it.

01:15Arts and culture define the human development of the person,

01:21the individual, the community, the nation.

01:24Only then that we are called human civilisation.

01:29There's the idea that business leaders are all about numbers,

01:34disconnected from the point of why creative industry people need support in the first place.

01:41There are corporate partners who do get it.

01:44They see art as a powerful tool for nation building and education and connection.

01:50So there's a way that art and business can meet halfway.

01:54I think when artists start to think in terms of impact and ROI

02:00and corporates understand how important it is for emotion and nation building and inspiring a nation,

02:10that alone will unlock something very powerful.

02:14And that shift alone will create space for deeper conversations.

02:18Why I decided to come back with my wife, I want to spin the game of fashion

02:21and I have to understand our culture, our tradition.

02:25Creative means what to us, to our team, is a problem solving.

02:30You know what? That is creative.

02:32Business is definitely important.

02:34Creative arts, of course, like what Ramli said, totally agree.

02:38You know, you have to put the creation up, the freedom.

02:42That was the mood board that you get to free to do your own whatever you want to do.

02:48But we start off grounded, do what we can.

02:51What my client needs, plus my creativity and what the society needs,

02:56but update wasn't current and relevant.

03:00When I can afford it, I did to do what I feel like doing it.

03:07My creation, my show, the way I want, the way the music, the presentation, everything.

03:12But step by step, it takes years.

03:14You know, then you can say, then only people not take notice about you.

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