Q. Then, was it a community of professional actors and actresses?

A. Oh, not really. Somewhat skillful at plays or musicals, they are not. They have their own jobs. In my case, I was an actor in a theater company in Seoul, but now I’m an office worker.

Since I was young, I liked plays so much that I wanted to major in play and film, but I majored in social science owing to my parents' opposition. However, when I went to university, I left my studies behind, and I wandered around Daehak-ro performance halls almost every day. I watched more than four to five hundred plays during those days, and if I add up all the plays and musicals I've seen so far, they will probably total over a thousand.

I also watched a lot of foreign performances in Las Vegas, Broadway in New York, and even at Piccadilly Circus in London. I went abroad every vacation just to see original performances.

Q. Then, is the original ‘The Little Bear’ a separate organization from the community that carried out ‘Local Signature Dessert Menu Development’ as a project supported by ‘Made in Public’ in 2019?

A. You could say so. Although the names are the same and some members overlap, the one, which began in 2013, was a kind of performance community, and the other that has worked since 2018 is a community d by people among my acquaintances interested in local issues. It is a loose community without any restrictions and is not a group for a specific business or profit, but a network of which members work in each area and help each other.

From a sociological point of view, you could say that a loose network of people with a certain level of affection and information is more effective than a formal organization formed for a specific purpose. It is a group of people with such an expansive possibility that shares information and links resources with each other, such as western style parties and social gatherings. It is to form a network with the people we trust now without setting any names, purposes, or frameworks of the community. What is fundamental to this type of a network is not a specific purpose or benefits, but a person's character.

Q. What kind of a project is the ‘Local Signature Dessert Menu Development’?

A. It was a project carried out by The Little Bear community in 2019, sponsored by the ‘Made in Public’ support program of the Wanju Cultural City Support Center. Various people who bake pottery, paint, and bake bread gathered to develop signature dessert products in the region, including soup, drinks, and baked items, using local food produced in five counties of Wanju-gun: Dongsang, Gyeongcheon, Bibong, Unju, and Hwasan. They have increased the cultural and artistic values of the products by making stories of each region and producer in ceramics, illustrations, photos, and videos. There were already cafes that many people could visit in Wanju-gun, but there was nowhere no to sell dessert products made of Wanju local foods such as ginger, dried persimmons, etc. Thus, the purpose of the project was to improve the situation for the development of those areas, which could be a way to coexist with other regions.

Q. What kind of project was ‘Full Moon Salon’ in 2018?

A. It was also a ‘Made in Public’ support program of the Wanju Cultural City Support Center. Young people in Wanju-gun had held cultural events every month, centering around the Starlight Workshop in Iseo-myeon, Wanju-gun, and in 2018, the communities pushed for a gathering to share their concerns about directions and identities, and to seek ways to collaborate while looking back at the results of the year.

Q. What type of community does ‘The Little Bear’ specifically aim for?

A. What we aim for is a loose community that allows members to join and withdraw freely and respect individual autonomy as much as possible. It is a gathering that is united through hobbies and common interests, and has an appropriate amount of concern and responsibility for each other. It focuses on the network, as it is a kind of a community that links trust between people. It is important to build trust with each other while respecting different values and orientations, and to understand each other and build trust in the process rather than succeeding with specific tasks together. And we also pursue a flexible gathering where members and activities are constantly evolving.