To built and maintain a Museum of world renown, providing the highest quality events in rapport with Indonesian and Balinese arts and culture, with highly trained staff who work together to reach the organisation’s goals while providing excellent service to people from all cultures.
PHILOSOPHY
Agung Rai’s vision is daring, inspiring, visionary, challenging and broad. At the same time it is also meaningful, realistic, acknowledges and builds on the past, and focuses on the future.
The philosophy of ARMA is a strong reflection of its creator. Agung Rai lives his life as a creative adventure full of exciting possibilities. He is keenly perceptive of people and the world around him and insightful about the present and the future. He is curious and imaginative; energetic, enthusiastic and spontaneous. He values co-operative efforts and good will.
ARMA is a direct result of Agung Rai’s love of the arts, as well as his culture and people.
Agung Rai’s philosophy doesn’t only impact on the outside world. This philosophy is well integrated into the whole organisation, and forms the fundamental ideas around which ARMA is built.
Agung Rai’s leadership is characterised by his concern not only for the arts, but also for humanity. He is adaptable, seeks harmony and affiliation and his leadership is one of encouragement.
The ARMA Philosophy is one of
• consultation
• teamwork
• professionalism
• quality, and
• the valuing of differences
This philosophy is integral to Agung Rai’s vision and has produced not only beautiful buildings, but incredible opportunities for artists, Balinese people of all ages, and people from an all-encompassing diversity of cultures.
Of course, no-one is alone with their dream. Agung Rai’s wife, Ibu Agung Rai Suartini, has supported her husband’s vision with her own strong characteristics. She is a driving force in making her husband’s dream sustainable,valuing competence, efficiency and results.
The philosophy is the guiding light by which the staff members carry out their work, and through which the organisation expresses itself.
ARMA Foundation
Background
The island of Bali in Indonesia has long been recognized for its many traditional art forms. Music and dance in particular have been celebrated for their contributions to world heritage. Originally these art forms were an outgrowth of the native Hindu religion. They were designed as offerings before the central Godhead to celebrate the grace of the human form. International appreciation for Balinese dance and music became the basis for much of the tourist interest in Bali.
Problem Statement
The ARMA Foundation in Bali, Indonesia, was established in 1996 to promote and preserve Balinese art and culture. The Foundation is the administrative arm for a complex that includes a world class museum, a center for visual and performing arts including a dance and music Sanggar, or informal school. Hundreds of children, teenagers and adults have benefited from the ARMA Sanggar, which ARMA makes available without cost to local families. Many of these youth have gone on to perform in their communities as skilled dancers and musicians. But now the continuation of the ARMA Sanggar program is seriously threatened by income loss in other areas of operation due to the drop in tourism.
ARMA is more than a museum. It is a centre for visual and performing arts, and provides for the visitor to enjoy the permanent collection of paintings, special temporary exhibitions, theatre performances, dance, music and painting classes, bookshop, library and reading room, cultural workshops, conferences, seminar and training programs, with a vision to become an internationally renowned museum of Balinese and Indonesian culture, organizing event exhibiting the uniqueness and diversity of these culture. The museum provides many quality services to people from various cultural backgrounds, the people who wish to experience and learn about Bali’s unique cultural heritage.
Performing Art
The general objective is to expand ARMA as a center for artistic activities including the preparation and application of Balinese cultural data and information to the needs of preservation, research, education and the society. The ARMA Museum has been a starting point of preservation since its early stages, when all of the equipment and tools were made ready. This includes the founding of the free dance and music Sanggar, with levels of children, teenagers, adults, and elders since 1998. There have also been regular performances of Balinese performing arts supporting this program.
Specific Program
The aim of this specific program for the preservation of the Legong Keraton of Peliatan within various aspects involves melody, movements, themes, narration, instrumental accompaniment, the systems of decoration, costuming, and staging. It also includes the socio-cultural and historical background of the music and dance.
Team Work
The framework of the preparations for the program at ARMA has already been arranged. The work group involves a director, a secretary, and three expert members at large. It also includes two dance choreographers, two music composers (musicologists), two musicians, and three dancers with backgrounds of formal education and local artistic dedication supported by the Sanggar ARMA. The program’s management team is supplemented with artists, a photographer, an audio-visual technician, an anthropologist, and a historian of Balinese literature. This group is involved in the matter of describing their respective duties. The whole team has been working together since the preparation stage, researching, collecting and organizing data, to the stage of implementation of these studies and the evaluation of work.
Fundraising program
The ARMA foundation has established and developed society’s appreciation of its mission through implementation of fundraising programs that guarantees the perpetuity of this cultural mission.
Within its vision of show-casing the uniqueness, vibrant, and diversity of the Indonesian and Balinese performing arts, the ARMA museum conducts a range of activities, including:
Dancing and music exercises in Sanggar ARMA;
Regular stage performances every, Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, Friday,Saturday, full moon, and new moon;
Cultural workshops, such as painting, dancing, playing traditional music, sculpture, making offerings, batik painting, meditation, and weaving, etc.
Regular and incidental exhibitions
No fee is charged to local people attending a cultural workshop organized by the ARMA Museum, as the ARMA Foundation was created to support and preserve the Balinese culture.
Recent events threaten the continuation of these traditional art forms. The shift within the Balinese society from an agrarian to an industrial livelihood was swift enough to make visible the lack of support for the arts. Globalization has brought a change in art making from one of balanced spiritual offering towards the basis for a wage system. Two terrorist bombings resulted in catastrophic drops in tourism, especially devastating as tourism generates 90% of the islands income. In good times the median income is roughly $5/day. Now the local population struggles to fulfill their basic needs, with less time is devoted to mastery of the arts. Other factors include a lack of enduring documentation about traditional dance and music, and the significant loss of master teachers through age and passing
We hope that you will consider joining the ARMA Foundation in its valuable effort with your financial support.
For further information about ARMA Foundation, please feel free to contact:
ARMA Foundation
Mr. Agung Rai
Chairman
