Learning forum for thinking together of ways to enrich everyday life

Learning Lab is a lecture program being implemented as part of the project “Fantasia! Fantasia!: A community where lifestyles are made real,” a project which imagines the city as a “learning forum” by aiming for a cycle in which changes in the cultural ecosystems of communities enrich the lives of each.
Guests from a variety of fields such as art, education and urban planning will examine our lifestyles from a different angle than usual, with learning in the community as our focus. For this year’s sessions in online talk format, we invite two guests per session to hold interactive discussions around three themes.
Learning Lab sessions #06 through #08 will provide a platform to ponder “creativity in daily life” under three themes. Taking as our starting point the Settlement Movement* in Sumida-ku, we would like to think about creativity in contemporary life as we loosely address each theme, including the everyday handicrafts that people engaged in at settlement houses, and aspects of our own nature, such as underlying gender-based differences within the handicraft genre.

*A volunteer-driven reformist social movement that flourished in Japan during the Taisho period.

#06 Where culture provided support: Kon Wajiro and the Settlement Movement

Kobokan Community Center, founded in Sumida Ward in 1919, offers childcare-related services as a welfare facility. The movement tackling welfare issues in the community was known as the Settlement Movement, a campaign developed not only at Kobokan but all over the country. The movement comprised more than one source, but the Tokyo Imperial University Settlement House built in Sumida-ku was designed by Kon Wajiro, and there are records of artists of the time doing volunteer work there. The Settlement Movement went on to change as the system of society around it changed. But what we can take away from its philosophy is that the movement saw culture as being indispensable for a better life. We consider the connection between welfare and creative expression with our guests, Ryoma Kayamura, who examines childcare records of the time and works at Kobokan, which began life as a settlement house and continues to evolve and operate today; and Izumi Kuroishi, who uncovers cultural aspects of settlement houses through the work of Kon Wajiro.

Izumi Kuroishi (Professor, Department of Cultural and Creative Studies, Aoyama Gakuin University)
Ryoma Kayamura (Assistant Chief Secretariat, Kobokan Community Center)

Admission

Free (No reservation required)
*Viewers responsible for internet costs

How to view

Fantasia! Fantasia! YouTube Channel
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4oUCCidKj9gy-it88rwRew?view_as=subscriber

*Details are subject to change.
*On the day of event, changes/cancelation of programs will be announced on the official Facebook page.

Contact

Fantasia! Fantasia! Office
E-mail：info@fantasiafantasia.jp

Period

Tuesday, December 8 2020, 19:00 - 21:00

Venues

Online

Credit

Organized by: Tokyo Metropolitan Government, Arts Council Tokyo (Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture), Happy Hunch (General Incorporated Association)