RUBY Lim-Yang remembers one morning in the early 1980s. The artistic director of theatre group Act 3 International says she was then queueing at the now-demolished National Theatre to book $240 worth of tickets for her very first Singapore Arts Festival.

She was the second person in line. In front of her was the late theatre doyen Kuo Pao Kun.

And it took over two hours to get her tickets because of the manual system then.

That nostalgic memory is one of many compiled in a book by the National Arts Council (NAC) to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the festival. Some 1,500 copies of Making Visible The Invisible are for sale at $20 each.

The launch of the book on Tuesday at The Arts House was part of the Singapore Writers Festival which runs till Sunday. Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) and SPH Foundation are presenting sponsors.

According to the NAC, the book is the first-ever documentation of the festival, listing the milestones and giving voice to the many people who grew up with the arts.

'When I looked at the draft, I was amazed to see that the very first Singapore Arts Festival dated all the way back to 1959,' said Mr Edmund Cheng, chairman of the NAC.

This was even before the country became independent in 1965. The next time the festival was held was in 1977 and the year after. It was then held biennially till 1998, and has since then been an annual affair.

The book's author Venka Purushothaman, 42, provost chief academic officer at Lasalle College of the Arts, hopes that the pictures will also trigger fond memories. He says the book, which took a year to complete, is a 'critical overview' of the policies that have shaped the arts scene through the decades.

'This book will never be complete,' he adds, because while it seeks to rekindle memories of the past, it also explores the future of the arts.

The inspiration for the book's title came from Swiss painter-philosopher Paul Klee who once said: 'Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible.'

Making Visible The Invisible is available at Earshot Cafe, The Arts House.

The Singapore Arts Festival will return next year from May 23 to June 22.