‘Urban Drawing’ by the Citizen Design Team, the New Deal for Wanju Urban Regeneration

Wanju-gun has been carrying out a cooperative project, the new deal for urban regeneration, in earnest since early this year after discussions for the project last year. In particular, through the experience of Wanju Cultural City, which collected and reflected citizens' opinions in the construction of ‘Wanju Cultural Sharing Space Da:Haeng’ last year, from this year, the opinions of residents are collected and reflected in the process of urban regeneration in Wanju-gun through cooperation. By sharing the operational experience of the 'Citizen Design Planning Team' that can do this, and through cooperative operations, we are overcoming the hardware-centric limitations of urban regeneration together and creating joint outcomes.

In fact, since the first half of 2021, through cooperation with the team of the new deal for Wanju urban regeneration, the operations of Citizen Design Planning Team of Bongdong Urban Regeneration Base, those of Saewon Village History Street Creation, and Bongdong Bicycle Rental Center have been carried out. Additionally, many other small and large urban regeneration teams including Gosan, Bongdong, Samrye, Sanggwan, and Yongjin in Wanju-gun are currently cooperating with each other. In particular, the Bongdong area is creating "common success experiences" by overcoming the citizens’ conflicting agendas through the experience of the citizen design planning team and solving the problem of areas excluded from urban regeneration sites through cooperation with the cultural city.

Wanju-type Village Festivals ‘Selling Values not Goods’

‘@Wanju Culture Market Day’

Members of ‘@Wanju Cultural Market Day’ directly discover the cultural characteristics of each village, develop them into contents, and and operate a village marketplace that citizens can enjoy with their neighbors.

From the initial planning stage, which was carried out as a pilot project in 2020, a citizen working group was formed to design the implementation process. The project target area was established and a citizen planning team, and a market day action group, were organized and promoted. The citizen planning team held market days in the 3 areas of Samrye, Iseo, and Bongdong in 2020, and added 4 more to make a total of 7 in 2021, including Yongjin, and Dongsang, under the theme of the cultural characteristics of each village they live in.

@Wanju Cultural Market Day, the processes of which the citizens planned and implemented entirely on their own, is becoming a small but fruitful, resident-centered Wanju-type village festival.

Culture and Healing are their daily life; 12 ‘Wanju Cultural Healing Schools’

Suffering from unexpected disasters for a long time, the possibility of "healing" of culture and art has increased. Wanju has been pondering over "cultural healing" since it established the plan to a cultural city in 2019. Even though they had not been based on academic theory, they sought possible healing methods through tangible and intangible cultural resources of the region. As expected, the way also touched the hearts and souls of the citizens.

Wanju's unique cultural healing experiments that we can practice in a sustainable way in our daily lives, even if they are not special or scientific, have been conducted in earnest this year. A total of 12 ‘Wanju Cultural Healing Schools’ opened, and programs utilizing the characteristics of the living areas of villages or communities were given. Communities and citizens became teachers and operated Wanju Cultural Healing Schools. Music was played alongside fire pits in the yard of an artist's home in a village, and closed schools were reborn as comforting schools for citizens to paint pictures, write, or observe the movement of bees. At a local bookstore, some residents gathered in twos and threes after work, and a late-night chat took place on the pretext of discussing books. The Wanju-type cultural healing, in which hearts that had been cut off by COVID-19, gather and touch again, face and embrace each other, and is starting in the hands of Wanju citizens.