Hiroshima Jin Daigaku and FEEL Hiroshima
Over the past few months I’ve been working with a bunch of great people on the Hiroshima Jin Daigaku (ひろしまジン大学) project. It is based on the Shibuya Daigaku project which received some attention from CNN a couple of years ago.
Basically, volunteer teachers will lead workshop style classes in a variety of locations – parks, streets, shops, restaurants as well as more typical meeting rooms – around the city. Anyone can become a teacher and anywhere can become a classroom.
We will be a sister “school”, but the group hopes that rather than create a carbon copy of the Shibuya project we can put something unique together. We are, of course, not actually opening a real university, but just like a university we hope that the project will become somewhere where a diverse group of people get together to learn from and teach each other, and through shared experiences greatly expand their circle of acquaintances. This, we feel, can eventually really have an impact of the city as a whole.
It is all a bit vague I know, and to be honest, I’m still struggling to imagine how the whole thing will turn out. One thing I am sure of though, is that if we can get the project off the ground and make it a success, it has great potential.
We’ve received a bit of publicity over the past few weeks, appearing in the December issue of Hiroshima Wink and in the 中国新聞 last week. An “Open Campus” is planned for March 20 and the project should kick off proper in May.
Later today (January 13), the opening party of an exhibition of the logos submitted by local designers in a logo contest will be held at Koba. It’ll be a pretty chill affair with some music, food and drinks (pay at the bar) as well as a short presentation about the project and a chance to quiz myself and the other organizers.
If you are at all interested in getting involved, slightly intrigued, or just fancy a drink, please come by from 8pm. (The logo exhibit runs for a week).
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