Based on the school's goal of nurturing talent, this project aims to use "sustainable culture" as the main topic and uses the Taiwan Folk Museum as its social practice venue to cultivate local cultures and talents. The following five aspects illustrate the results of this year's project:
1. The establishment of the "Cultural Creation" program:
This program integrates various academic disciplines in the College of Humanities and Management, connects courses in the field of general education, enriches the students' knowledge of humanism, and cultivates their cultural literacy through local cultural heritage, to cultivate the students' cross-domain capabilities and vision. In terms of the teaching model, it is constructed from cross-domain thinking, and the topic-oriented teaching mode is used to guide the students to recognize, interpret, and narrate local cultural features as a cross-domain practice, hoping to reorient the current teaching modes. In terms of the semester courses, such as "The Culture and Creativity of Taichung City", "Cultural Assets and VR Operations", "Cultural Resources Investigation in Local Cities", "Community Humanities and Perspectives in Taking Records", are offered to enrich the local culture. Among them, "The Culture and Creativity of Taichung City" is taught by professors from the Central Taiwan University of Science and Technology (CTUST), the National Chung Hsing University, and local cultural and historical workers as well as some local poets. Lectures, visits, and field research are adopted to inspire the students to care for local cultures; students are also encouraged to adopt creative thinking through absorbing urban aesthetics elements.
2. Launching the "Folklore Academy" series of activities:
The Taiwan Folklore Museum has launched a series of activities, by holding lectures on "Local Cultural Creativity", "Traditional Architecture Guides", "Folk Songs, and Dialects", and the "Taiwanese and Hakkanese Poetry and Folk Songs". For instance, Professor Chen Yong-bao has taught the students to recite Li Po's poem "Please Drink Up" in Taiwanese; Mr. Lin Shi-heng's folk song singing class was also very popular and well-received by the community residents. All these courses and events were participated in by the community members, enabling young students to work with the senior citizens and to practice social responsibility. These activities, unfortunately, we're unable to be carried out until this May, due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, so the results were slightly affected. In addition to the folklore, these events also incorporated themes on "caring for the disadvantaged" and "equal rights issues". For example, the "YOUNG COFFEE pop-up shop" held on August 30, encouraged young dementia patients to regain confidence and find work through career redesign. There were nearly 100 people from the dementia families participating in this activity; the scene was heartfelt and moving.
3. Designing the "Culture-based Classrooms" to reinforce cultural education:
CTUST collaborated with the Taichung Municipal Chongde Junior High School in Beitun District in the form of a museum-school alliance to enhance the cultural education. Specifically, the results can be illustrated as follows: First, the Taiwan Folk Museum serves as the students' off-campus learning space. This March, more than 500 seventh graders from Chongde Junior High came to the museum to study traditional architecture and printmaking. Second, a series of traditional culture study activities were held. CTUST collaborated with Chongde to conduct 36 lectures on life etiquettes, traditional festivals, and traditional architecture. Third, compiling teaching plans for local cultures: the compilation of teaching plans for Nan-xing Temple, Wen-chang Temple, Yido Mansion, traditional architecture, and folk art (prints) were accomplished to match the contents of the 108 new curricula.
4. Linking with the cooperation projects to enrich the local cultural creativity:
This project, centering on "sustainable culture", links local organizations and groups and uses local culture as the topic to help match four industry-academic research projects:
(1) "Taiwan Folk Cultural Relics Restoration: The Story of Restoration Master Chen Li-Quan"
(2) " Cultural Quanurces Nurturing and Accumulation: The Refinement and Application Promotion of Li-ze Cultural Assets"
(3) "A Decade's Resonance: Research on the Construction of Local Community Music Culture and Its Implementation Effectiveness"
(4) "Religious Festival Theater: Creative Research on Cross-Art Integration and Technology Application"
5. Practicing Folk Culture and Social Issues:
In order to implement the social issues of a sustainable culture, this project focuses on two important folk art figures: Mr. Guo Chang-song and Mr. Chen Li-quan.
The 95-year-old Guo Chang-song has been teaching folk songs at the Taiwan Folk Museum for 30 years. He takes promoting folk music as his life-long mission, and he calls these songs "Hometown Music". Mr. Guo, born in Japan, was taught cradle songs, Japanese children's ballads, and Taiwanese "Nian-Ge (Narrative Singing)" by his mother since childhood. He took a high interest in learning these songs and his instrument playing and singing skills are also excellent. The museum has been promoting Guo Chang-song's "Hometown Music" activities for many years. This August, the "Beitun Music Festival Music/Culture/Life" activity was held. The scene was extremely lively, and it won great acclaim by the public. Besides, Mr. Guo is going to donate the folk music texts he has collected all his life to CTUST to extend his influence of folk music. Also, restoration master Mr. Chen Li-quan has devoted his life to restoring cultural relics, and has worked with a group of like-minded friends to found the "Taichung Folk Cultural Relics Association." He has been commissioned to restore the old furniture and antiques donated by Mr. Xi De-jin, as well as furniture stored at General Sun Li-ren's old residence and Zhaixing Villa in Taichung City. He has earned himself the title of "Furniture Doctor" and "Cosmetic Surgeon of Antiques". Through this project, he is willing to make public his years of experience in the restoration of cultural relics and pass on his knowledge. He will work with the Taiwan Folk Museum next year to share his experience of restoration techniques on traditional furniture. This project will activate local cultural vitality.