Sectional Workshop A： "Ideas for Creating and Staging Events in Your Community"
Instructed by Toshio Hirono
｡?irono
I've been involved in a variety of urban and village development programs, 80% of which have ended in failure. Successes are few and far between. That's how difficult it is for urban development to gel. Once you get one to succeed, though, you're able to see clearly why the others failed. Not through logic or theory, but through actual, physical experience.
For instance, an event whose planning and implementation went smoothly and speedily without encountering any problems whatsoever won't, once it's over, yield anything further in terms of urban development or tourism promotion which lies ahead of it. Staging an event is not an end in itself; it's a means to create a certain buzz through the harmonizing and coordinating of the controversy surrounding it.
The greater the buzz the more successful that event has been, leading to the activation of the community. There is absolutely no miracle drug, no instant results in urban development.
We tend to have this misconception that the most important thing is to create something which meets with the least opposition, the greatest common divisor kind of thing . Not so. In order to activate the community, support and opposition have to be created, and allowed to clash. Otherwise there's no buzz.
Take for example, the small French town of Le Puy-du-Fou, with only 4,000 residents and facing depopulation, where the residents got involved en masse and started an "outdoor musical" with great success. Culture has the power to connect people. It has the power to energize people. When an organization is based on culture, the human relationships inside that organization are naturally formed, therefore even when obstacles are encountered there is enough power to overcome them. So it's my feeling that when residents set out to enjoy their community in order to energize it, when they seek to learn more about it, become knowledgeable about it, and recognize their community in a positive manner for being its own unique self, then that leads to giving power to the community.
Turning to tourism, in order to attract many visitors the community has to exhibit hospitality. Again, a community has to be energized to do that. That's ,a basic principle, I feel.
Without an activated community there can be no tourism promotion. Community activation starts with rediscovering and re-acknowledging one's own community. This involves three critical factors ： 1. establishing an identity; 2. establishing a network; and 3 . establishing a message. Let me elaborate on each. Establishing an identity means how to express the uniqueness of that community or area. By expressing the uniqueness of the area, attachment is formed which leads to a sense of pride. Establishing a network of course includes networking within the community, but also through working together in the event planning and staging processes people can get involved with others outside their community, and link their networks together. Establishing a message means continuously transmitting a message from that community. Not just receiving, but by having something that the community can transmit to the outside world, it can put a message out there. These three things should enable the people who were involved and who participated in the process to rediscover and re-acknowledge their own community. That in turn should lead to community activation and tourism promotion.
