Urban Ventures Returns After Six Years With A Jalan Besar Street Party & Makers’ Trail

Music, arts and culture is hitting the streets again (Credit: Courtesy of LOPELAB)

Music is for everyone and everywhere – even when it spills out onto the streets. In a relatively sterile and innocuous city where rules reign, it’s a breath of fresh air to have events like Urban Ventures injecting a frenetic kind of energy into the veins of the metropolis. It’s been six years since the last Urban Ventures, best known for transforming the Keong Saik streets into a festivity of music, dance, art and culture. We hunger for pop-ups like this, and like a much-awaited entrée, Urban Ventures is finally arriving with a comeback.

Presented by LOPELAB and Ice Cream Sundays, in partnership with DesignSingapore Council and Enterprise Singapore, this iteration of Urban Ventures is shaping up to be something slightly different. A key event of Singapore Design Week 2025, this revival of Urban Ventures looks to be a takeover of the Jalan Besar neighbourhood across two weekends in September. In fact it’s less of a takeover and more of a temporary outdoor residency, sporting a string of initiatives that celebrates one of Singapore’s most cherished neighbourhoods.

Urban Ventures this year hoists the concept of “Find Your Folks @ Jalan Besar”, punctuated with a Makers’ Trail on one week (11-19 September) and a Street Festival during the next (20-21 September). This dual-natured approach lies in contrast with Urban Ventures’ former identity as a street party, and it now considers itself more of a “long-form public design intervention”. For the Makers’ Trail, this features site-specific public benches co-designed by the independent and hyperlocal businesses of Jalan Besar, with participants like Druggists, Average Service, Community Coffee and The Fashion Pulpit. Along the trail, visitors will encounter more significant culture constituents of the Jalan Besar habitat, getting in touch further with the area’s DNA.  

But what’s Urban Ventures without its street jamborees? The following weekend sees the return of Darker Than Wax’s BREW along Hamilton Road, an evolved version of the label’s signature courtyard party series. Besides BREW, the street party also features a Skate Jam with skatable installations and skate art, street chess by Aliwal Chess Club, kids craft workshops by PLAY! and thrift markets by The Fashion Pulpit. Cranking out more choons is an ensemble of additional music collectives thrown into the Urban Ventures mix, with Tropika, 5210PM and Revision Music manning the decks. Who needs a club dancefloor when you’ve got closed streets and the open air?

Urban Ventures 2025, 11-19 September 2025 (Makers’ Trail) and 20-21 September 2025 (Street Festival), Jalan Besar district. Follow Urban Ventures on socials for more information.