As the Performing Arts industry does its best to stay afloat during this pandemic, the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences (SLAS) has launched the #savethearts initiative to support and generate revenue for artistic activities. Taylor's University and The Actors Studios (TUTAS) collaborated to organize three activities: webinars, online workshops, and online theatre performances. Working in collaboration with the Psychology programme, this initiative was able to bring together artists, teachers, and students to learn about mental health issues in order to help them cope with Covid 19 situations.
Weeks before that, Senior Lecturer Mark Beau was able to hold a workshop that helps teachers improve their teaching through the use of theatrical methods. As a result, the workshop was able to collect nearly RM 10,000 in revenue to assist the Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre (klpac) in meeting its monthly expenses. We are also proud of our Bachelor of Performing Arts students, who created and ran an online performance to raise funds for klpac. This performance, titled "Once Everything's Done, I Just Wanna Go For A Run," was attended by more than 40 people via Zoom and received positive feedback from the audience. With this type of initiative, we at Taylor's University and The Actors Studios hope to keep the Malaysian arts industry healthy and build a stronger connection with the community to reintroduce creative arts to Malaysians.
