Budy Hartono Foo Bin Abdul Rahman
About
Growing up in the heart of Singapore's red-light district, Budy became aware of how systems shape lives—who they include or marginalise, and where intentions and reality diverge.
A recipient of the Tomowork Talent Uplift Scholarship, he draws on his experience with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder to bring neurodivergent perspectives into spaces rarely designed for them. His entry into cultural management began with forum theatre for social intervention, work that required creative rigour and a clear understanding of how institutions function.
Since then, Budy has worked across various professional contexts—developing a heritage research proposal for the Singapore Heritage Society, including programme design and execution planning; presenting diversity initiatives to C-suite executives at a multinational law firm; and conceptualising a fundraising strategy for the Children's Museum Singapore using conserved bricks. Across these roles, he moves between community imperatives and institutional logic.
At LASALLE College of the Arts, Budy worked on various academic projects that developed his analytical approach. These include a policy analysis of how China's video game regulations shaped HoYoverse's worldbuilding, examining how state power shapes cultural imagination, and a graded docent tour at the National Gallery Singapore that used pole dancing to illuminate how contemporary art operates, where the body becomes a site of commentary on lived contradiction.
In both projects, he examined how power and culture intersect and what these tensions reveal. He bring this perspective into organisations where strategy, policy and social impact demand more than conventional thinking.
Collective Memories of Pink, Green, Blue: Examining TikTok's role in the archiving of the August 2025 Indonesian protests
This thesis examines how the collective memories of the August 2025 Indonesian protests are negotiated on TikTok in the months following the event.
The protests produced distinct iconographies—from the tri-colour theme of pink, green and blue, to slogans, hashtags and creative adaptations of pop culture references—which led to state intervention, including the suspension of TikTok Live across Indonesia.
Drawing on connective memory theory and qualitative content analysis of Indonesian-language TikTok videos posted between October 2025 and January 2026, this thesis examines how this iconography travels through TikTok's circulatory logic. It explores the memetic spread of content through replication and recontextualisation, and considers whether meaning survives, mutates or sediments over time, as well as how it is transmitted in the process.
The case study addresses a critical gap in contemporary scholarship on digital memories, which largely focuses on established cultural memory institutions such as anniversaries, memorials and archives that anchor and sustain memory outside the platform. TikTok was the primary site of the movement's cultural production and memory. However, the platform is designed for engagement rather than preservation, and its circulatory logic accelerates forgetting by continuously surfacing newer content, leaving protest iconography intact but gradually receding from active circulation.
What does it mean for cultural heritage when a commercial platform becomes the primary custodian of a community's memory? This thesis argues that the sedimentation of protest iconography on TikTok represents an undertheorised form of heritage loss, one that heritage institutions and cultural practitioners are not yet equipped to address.
Professional practice
Budy's professional practice includes grant writing, heritage research, policy analysis, strategic programme development, advocacy for diversity, equity and inclusion, philanthropic strategy and fundraising, market research and audience strategy, as well as interdisciplinary curriculum design.
Tomowork Charity Golf & Dinner (Singapore, 2026)
Budy managed front-of-house operations and served as an auction spotter for the Tomowork Charity Golf & Dinner 2026.
This event supports Tomowork’s mission of empowering students with learning disabilities by fostering inclusive employment and professional development. Budy facilitated donor engagement and provided real-time bidding support during the live auction to secure critical funding for programmes.
Festivalul International de teatru de la Sibiu Undergraduate Research Conference (Sibiu, Romania, 2025)
Budy was selected as a student representative for LASALLE College of the Arts to present research at this international forum in Sibiu, Romania. This engagement involved sharing academic insights with a global audience of theatre and arts professionals.
2025 Osaka World Expo Forum Exchange, Osaka Metropolitan University (Osaka, Japan, 2025)
Budy represented LASALLE’s School of Creative Industries in a student exchange at Osaka Metropolitan University in Japan.
Held during the World Expo, this forum focused on cross-cultural exchange and academic innovation. He presented on how creatives in Singapore, a country listed as the 'World's Most Expensive City', navigate rising rental costs.
Where dreams take shape: Conceptualising the Singapore Pavilion for World Expo 2025 (Osaka, Japan, 2025)
Budy presented on 'World expos as a site of articulating sociotechnical imaginaries' as part of the Where Dreams Take Shape forum. This presentation provided a critical academic framework for the Singapore Pavilion, analysing how global exhibitions function as spaces for national storytelling and technological visioning.
Building on the industry keynote by the Pavilion’s lead designers, this session bridged the gap between high-level architectural concepts and media theory, offering an independent scholarly perspective on the cultural impact of World Expos within a transnational context.
National Museum of Singapore: NMS Youth Panel Apprenticeship (Singapore, 2021–2022)
As part of the NMS Youth Panel 2021 Apprenticeship Programme, Budy worked under professional mentorship to develop public programming during the pandemic.
As a student curator, he was entrusted with a S$15,000 budget to organise Singapore’s first post-lockdown in-person art bazaar. In this role, he navigated complex governmental health protocols to safely restore grassroots cultural exchange within an institutional setting.
The initiative successfully contributed to a 35% increase in museum visitorship in Q3 2021, providing foundational experience in responsible budget management and institutional operations.
Excavations Theatrical Tours at Singapore Art Museum (Singapore, 2018)
Budy was an ensemble-guide-actor for the Excavations theatrical tour at Singapore Art Museum, as part of the Singapore Heritage Festival 2018.
This role involved delivering immersive, site-specific performances that blended historical storytelling with public engagement to make heritage more accessible.
This project was a drama-based outreach practice, focused on using performance to facilitate a deeper community connection to local history.
Katja Marie Kroonenberg
Amirra Wardah Binte Shamsul-Bahari
Trevor Wee
Jenise Lee
Sharafah Malihah
Tan Ko Lin Colin
