ISKL Launches Three-City Music Exchange with Jakarta and Singapore

A new inter-school arts tradition has taken root across Southeast Asia, with The International School of Kuala Lumpur (ISKL) hosting the inaugural Corak Seni Exchange in collaboration with Jakarta Intercultural School (JIS) and Singapore American School (SAS). The event brought together middle school students from all three campuses for a rotating programme of band, strings, and choir.

According to Relocate Magazine, ISKL's Middle School Activities and Athletics Director Paul McTigue described the exchange as something that "started as an idea to bring students from different schools together through music" before becoming a fully realised annual event. The Corak Seni name, drawn from a Malay phrase evoking individual artistic voices coming together as a whole, was chosen to reflect the collaborative spirit of the initiative.

How the exchange worked

The logistics unfolded across two consecutive weeks and three cities. While ISKL's Band students hosted their JIS and SAS counterparts in Kuala Lumpur, the school's own Strings students travelled to Singapore to be received by SAS. The following week, ISKL's Middle School Choir flew to Jakarta to take part in their own exchange at JIS. Each school rotated as both host and guest, giving students an immersive experience of different campus cultures as well as different musical environments.

The three schools are all member institutions of the Interscholastic Association of Southeast Asian Schools (IASAS), a grouping that has long coordinated sports and arts competitions across the region. The Corak Seni Exchange differs from traditional IASAS events in its emphasis on collaborative learning rather than competition, with students expected to rehearse and perform together rather than against each other.

Why it matters for British-curriculum families

For international schools in the region, co-curricular programming that spans multiple countries has become an increasingly important differentiator in a competitive admissions market. The exchange is positioned as an annual fixture, with the rotation of host schools and musical disciplines set to change each year. Families at ISKL, which follows a North American curriculum, as well as those at JIS and SAS, can expect the programme to grow in scale as it becomes established. Schools following British curricula in Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta will be watching to see whether similar multi-campus arts initiatives emerge within their own networks.