For the sake of Singapore’s entrepreneurial future, don’t put ‘Sticker Lady’ in jail

Traditionally, Singapore hasn’t been kind to vandals.

In 1994, it landed four strokes of the cane on Michael Fay’s naked bum, provoking then US President Bill Clinton to denounce the punishment. In 2010, Swiss expat Oliver Fricker was given three strokes for infiltrating the train depot and spraying graffiti onto the trains.

And just today, Facebook feeds were flooded with news that the authorities have arrested a 25-year-old woman, dubbed ‘Sticker Lady’, for allegedly painting the tongue-in-cheek words “My Grandfather Road” on some roads in Singapore.

(Check out her blog at: skl0.tumblr.com)

The Singlish phrase is a reference to how the country is over-regulated by the ruling People’s Action Party and its founding patriarch Lee Kuan Yew.

Besides the graffiti on the roads, the woman is also suspected for pasting a series of humorous stickers (hence the moniker) around the island. Photos of those stickers have gone viral on social networks.

If she’s convicted of vandalism, she could be fined up to S$2,000 (US$1,550), jailed up to three years, or both. Fortunately, as a woman, she won’t be caned, unlike what some reports have claimed.

But as much as this Sticker Lady is breaking the law, she’s different from Michael Fay and Oliver Fricker.

She’s doing street art, that is, any form of art that is found in public space. Her works are playful, witty, and satirical. And while her pieces deface public property, that wasn’t her only intent.

Granted, no verdict has been dished out yet, but I cannot emphasize enough the importance of the authority’s decision on Singapore’s status as a global city with entrepreneurial street cred. After all, there’s a strong link between freedom, culture, creativity, and entrepreneurship.

City planners understand one thing very well: To attract the world’s most talented people, you’ve got to offer them the best living standards, not just in terms of how having comfortable penthouses or low tax rates, but also in terms of having a vibrant cultural life and arts scene.  You’ve also got to give them an environment that allows them to break rules and challenge convention.

I’m not plucking this out of thin air; prominent businessmen and politicians at last year’s World Entrepreneurship Forum have said the same thing. The correlation between innovation and culture is also evident in this ranking of the world’s startup ecosystems, with Silicon Valley, New York City, and London taking the top three spots.

The Singapore government acknowledges this too, pouring billions to turn the island state into a renaissance city. The new, magnificent ArtScience Museum, a mantle piece of the statuesque Marina Bay Sands resort and casino, has even hosted exhibitions by groundbreaking artists like Andy Warhol and Vincent Van Gogh.

“The people who truly deface our neighbourhoods are the companies that scrawl their giant slogans across buildings and buses trying to make us feel inadequate unless we buy their stuff. They expect to be able to shout their message in your face from every available surface, but you’re never allowed to answer back”. — English graffiti artist and political activist ‘Banksy’.