Tucked away in the neon projections and sculptures during the Singapore Night Festival was a market selling fish-shaped stickers, grunge jewellery, and more by small local creators.
Pasar MAD-lam, organised by the creative group madyourmotherproud or MAD Market, ran on the weekends of Aug 21 to Sep 5, at Capitol Singapore Outdoor Plaza. MAD stands for Making A Difference. Every weekend saw over 40 stalls.
“I think we felt a bit of imposter syndrome, like we were a small fish in a big sea. But I’m grateful to HeritageSG and Singapore Night Festival for being kind to us and guiding us in things we should look out for,” said co-founder Peter Sharvin Skandarajah.
Mr Peter and his co-founder Paul Ho officially started MAD Market in October 2024, after trialling a few smaller markets beforehand. As creators themselves, they understood some of the obstacles that can come up when you start putting out your art as a business.
Their goal was to create a market in areas with lower footfall to fill that gap, and to keep rental costs low where they could to reduce the intimidation creators may feel when they start to booth.
They wanted to stay more on theme for the night festival, which was themed “Myths and Legends”, and so they named the market Pasar MAD-lam and encouraged booth-holders to create more localised items. Some of these included keychains of MRT stations or stickers of Singapore’s wildlife.
Creators could get a solo booth for three days at S$250 or share a booth for three days at S$125.
They also wanted to uplift small creators by helping them develop branding and promotional skills, such as requiring each vendor, however new they may be, to have a social media portfolio.
Ms Karina Xyza Selvaraju, 22, is a graphic designer who sells prints and stickers under her artist name Kribblez. She is an emerging creator who has only boothed a handful of times over the past year. Pasar MAD-lam was her largest market yet.
“I never really had a social media presence before. Ever since I started to booth it, it always pushed me to put out more of my work for reach. I’ve never done reels before, but in that market alone, I’ve done like four reels at the event alone,” she said. “These are things that at one point I thought were scary, but now it’s like a quick five-minute task.”
Ms Aradhna Gulati, a jeweller under her brand Sylphspire, was also a vendor at the market, selling necklaces, rings, and even mirror frames using soft soldering. This soldering method is more accessible to newer jewellers like Ms Aradhna, who has been practising over the past year, because it uses metals with lower melting points.
“Pasar MAD-lam was nice because they had a really good curation and it was artist-led. It is definitely heartening to see that more people are willing to step out of their way and create these events for other different types of artists, whether it’s print or something like me, which is more tactile jewellery and accessories,” said Ms Aradhna, 32.
Mr Peter, 24, who also has his own design brand Quiet at Home, said that MAD Market would always curate their events in the best interests of the vendors.
“The one thing my co-founder and I are very aligned on is the fact that the customers aren’t our main priority. Of course we want people to come, but our priority will always be the boothers,” he said.
Even beyond planning, his team tries to support booth-holders during the market itself.
“When you’re doing the market, time flies by. You get very tired, and you don’t even have time to eat sometimes. Can we take photos for them and give them the footage for them to go and use if they need it? It’s those kinds of things which I feel like make a lot of a difference,” said Mr Peter.
