“Backlogues” — pronounced “backlogs” — is a portmanteau of “back” or “backlog”, and “dialogues”.

The podcast series is a research and documentation project rooted in the oral history methodology — which suggests that these are “dialogues” about personal histories (i.e., logs of lives from “back then”) of arts management practice.

And of course, any arts manager, whether budding or established, will have intimate familiarity with the ubiquitous presence of backlogs of paperwork, reports, invoices, contracts, publicity material and production documentation. The arts manager’s work never ends!

The recognition that there is a lack of information about the arts manager and the history of arts management in Singapore. The field of arts management is relatively young, and the work of the arts manager is often obscure and lesser spoken about.

Although culture has always been of importance to the state narrative, the arts — let alone arts management — have not been featured prominently in the Singapore Story. And even though the arts have always had an active presence in Singapore, many do not think about the arts or arts management when it comes to our collective cultural histories.

Despite the growth of arts management courses and degrees in Singapore and a growing interest in archival research and documentation of the arts ecosystem in Singapore, there is an existing lacuna of critical documentation of what goes on behind the scenes, particularly the practices, skill sets, and insights of arts managers and intermediaries.

Backlogues had its earliest roots around 2018. The idea arose amongst arts managers working in intermediary organisations, when asked to share their arts management practices with the SMU Arts and Culture Management Programme, where one of Backlogues’ current Principal Researcher Hoe Su Fern is the Programme Leader. As the group tried to provide learning materials for arts management students, they were confronted by the lack of resources specific to the local context of arts management.

In 2020, Su Fern and Centre 42’s Ma Yanling started doing interviews with practicing arts managers as resources for their theatre management course. As the discussions developed, with Sing Lit Station eventually joining in, the idea of a research and documentation project about arts management in Singapore arose.

1. To foster an understanding and appreciation of the complexity of the conditions of artistic production. The arts are not produced simply by spontaneous acts of creative expression, nor is it simply a solo act by a creative genius. Rather, the arts are often the outcome of collaboration and collective activities. Working in the arts is a balance between passion and practical considerations.

2. To grow a deeper appreciation of “how art works” in the specific context of Singapore, starting within the literary arts and theatre sectors. This appreciation entails a recognition of the arts in Singapore as a complex ecosystem consisting of many interdependent parts and players.

3. To develop a keen understanding of the importance of the arts manager and their context-specific roles and responsibilities to the survival and flourishing of the arts ecosystem in Singapore. The arts manager is often the “unsung hero” supporting the artists and their creative processes, as well as building critical bridges between the arts, artists and audiences.

1. To grow an informed audience: The podcast format of Backlogues creates a new digital entry-point that reaches out to, and engages new and existing audiences in order to deepen the appreciation and understanding of the complex skills and practices required to produce and sustain the arts ecosystem in Singapore.

2. To build research and documentation of an under-documented sector of the arts in Singapore: Backlogues aims to serve as an important historical archive of arts management in Singapore that will be useful to historians, practitioners, and researchers. It will also be a useful resource for arts management programmes, arts education and the teaching of other arts and humanities subjects in local and international institutions. It also aims to develop a comprehensive resource platform about arts management across all arts and creative sectors in Singapore.

3. To enable capability development: The hope is that Backlogues can contribute in nurturing competent arts managers and intermediaries with industry and context-specific knowledge through knowledge transfer of essential skills from pioneering arts managers and intermediaries such as audience development, resource management, stakeholder relations and communications. This endeavour also seeks to build and strengthen the diverse capabilities in the arts, including leveraging digital technology to create new possibilities in arts engagement and research.

The documentation of arts management practice for this project is based on the methodology of oral history interviews.

Oral history is an established research method to systematically collect memories and knowledge of past events and periods. The interviewees invited to participate in the oral history process of Backlogues have first-hand experience of what goes on behind the scenes in arts companies and cultural institutions, such as the day-to-day operations and activities required to enable the artistic process or to connect the arts to audiences. These recorded audio interviews will feature the interviewee’s spoken first-hand and in-depth account of their experiences, as well as their personal opinions and insights on the historically significant events. No two episodes or interviews are similar, resulting in rich oral testimonies and valuable interpretive perspectives.

To use oral history as a methodology for documenting the history of arts management is apt, precisely because there is no one-size-fits-all model or cookie-cutter approach for arts management. The deep skills and knowledge involved in the support structures around artmaking, such as stage management, programming and publishing, tend to reside in experienced individuals, and are acquired and transmitted via chance one-to-one conversations or the crucible of trial and error.

As a pioneering generation of arts managers eventually fade from the scene, we want to seize this critical opportunity to capture, codify and safeguard their knowledge as intangible cultural heritage for transmission to the next generation.