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.

#08 Deciphering our different ideas of what is “natural”: Thinking about the nature of those next to you

In previous Learning Lab discussions, we have invited a researcher into polyamory, or the practice of engaging in multiple intimate relationships of various sexual orientation, and a filmmaker with the experience of being brought up communally as guests to examine the direction “family” is taking. The Settlement Movement and handicrafts we looked at in sessions #06、#07 incorporate creative aspects that allow people to live better lives, but at the same time encompass the issue of gender disparity. Living better lives may in some cases be a concept that is highly dependent on the nature of livability for the individual.
In order to make sense of our own thoughts in a flexible way without fixating on the nature of others, it is necessary to have the imagination to conceive of each person having their own nature, rather than labeling others according to what we ourselves consider “natural.”
For this session, our two guests are Daisuke Watanabe, the author of “What is Sexual Diversity?” and a researcher into gender/sexuality education, and
Nao Kimura, a writer involved in selection for the Pia Film Festival who as a writer has conducted many interviews on the theme of art and social issues.
Together with our guests we think about communication through education and journalism, and how we can put our imagination to work regarding the nature of others.

Guests: Daisuke Watanabe, Associate Professor, Center for Research in General Education
Nao Kimura (freelance writer)

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 22 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)