Wanju, the cultural city, pays attention to a "cultural community" as a key base and starting point of community culture. In order to revitalize cultural personnel and cultural communities with various cultural values, it focuses on yielding professionals, creating activity spaces, and discovering cooperative and collaborative projects. It also supports these activities to become common and continuous within our lives and communities. As the main force of the local cultural ecosystem, nurturing creative cultural professionals and a cultural community, and cultivating culture through people are the key points of the cultural city Wanju.

Culture maker and culture makers

Wanju is a place with abundant community experience through local food representing Wanju, but the experience of cultural communities is completely different. How can cultures that have entered familiar community experiences shine? In Wanju, it suggests each individual problem is that of the society, so the key point is the expansion of subjectivity. The beginning course is ‘Wanju Culture Maker Academy,’ which fosters Wanju-type creative cultural professionals. It is not a common omnibus-style of education for each subject, but a systematic human resources training process for problem solving and cultural project-making. From the beginning to the end of the training, a dedicated professional instructor works with each trainee. In the process of walking through the trainees' problems and solutions together, the most important element is 'people'. Education is conducted in a way that first forms a ‘solidarity of concerns’ before finding people with the same concerns, and the means and methods of solutions. It is the beginning of a cultural method to share experiences with each other, changing positions for predicting various situations based on understanding and respect. In addition, it is also the time when Wanju culture makers, a Wanju-type cultural community, is formed together.

It supports common values, not just one project

There is no distinction between the commonly existing geography and generations in the Wanju cultural community. It is a gathering of people who imagine and practice the same thoughts, interests, and values. It is diversified ranging from common-interest communities that share their interests, to intimate communities d by individual needs, and social economy communities that pursue social and economic values at the same time. The diverse purposes and activities of the community means that the concepts and categories of the Wanju-type cultural community applied in the field are not limited, and are flexibly applied depending on the situation.

Wanju cultural communities can operate freely thanks to the support system. It’s said that “projects impossible in other organizations or institutions are possible in the cultural city.” This is true because the support system of Wanju communities is not tied to a business frame but has a policy-level frame. Active consulting and budget support are granted to the direction the community pursues rather than promoting a single project.

‘Wanju Culture Commons’ understanding each other and being in solidarity in various practices

Wanju's cultural community support project has an integrated system of activities for citizens to discover and solve community problems based on the small-scale understanding of each other, and the support for the activities. Community support is divided into preparatory and growth types, and this division focuses on the process of community growth. 

The puppet show club, which was started to entertain the community’s children, started as a theater company and became a cooperative, and the community that supports the activities of migrant women (mothers) whose social relationships have been cut off due to corporate migration, has changed from a social gathering to a platform for forming a bond of common understanding of mothers nationwide, owing to their external activities.

In Wanju Cultural City, the concept of a cultural community is expanding beyond solving local problems to social innovation, in that it pursues changing the social system and promoting regional development, in addition to finding local culture solutions. In this respect, the expansion of a community is very significant. There are communities that have been focused on social issues from the start, but as numbers increase, more and more communities are taking an interest in social issues. In line with the contents of the activity becoming a social issue, the target is expanding from members to families, and even to the whole community.

Amid the interaction of common resources, power, sense, collaboration and cooperation, the foundation for Wanju culture commons, which transforms the society with culture, is gaining strength and solidifying.