Breaking down the worlds

I WAS woken by the morning sunlight pouring through the glass and curtains of my hotel room window. From my third-floor room I could see a busy main road with a heavy flow of self-styled jeeps, rickshaw tricycles and pedestrians. Far to the east, below the rising sun, was a green mountain ridge.
This busy main road passes over the Angono River. Above the water was a replica of a house, suspended by ropes from poles erected on the river. The previous night I enjoyed its beauty – the light inside the house pierced its papier-mâché walls and gleamed on the water reflecting the house. A piece of installation art!
I was visiting a town called Angono, some 30 kilometres to the east of the Philippine capital Manila, to participate in conference and workshop on public art “as a step towards a creative city development”. This was part of the 6th Neo-Angono Public Art Festival, organised by Neo-Angono, a local movement and organisation founded by artists, and sponsored by the Japan Foundation.
Small as it may be, Angono is surrounded by a series of farming and fishing villages scattered around the shore of the country’s largest lake, Laguna de Bay. During Typhoon Ondoy (known outside the Philippines as Ketsana), which ripped through the region in September, the areas around Angono were affected by severe flooding.
Angono is known as “the Art Capital of the Philippines” and is the hometown of two of the country’s most well-known artists: musician Lucio San Pedro and painter Carlos “Botong” Francisco. Most of the country’s creative industries are concentrated here and the town frequently looks like a huge gallery, with artworks from many artists and artisans on display.

Coinciding with the public art festival was the town fiesta, held every year on November 22-23 to celebrate the feast of Pope Clement I, a first century AD Christian saint. At this time, Angono’s streets, churches and houses are decorated with lanterns and small flags.

Breathing life into this town of about 100,000 people is Neo-Angono, a network of local and international artists. Founded in 2004, Neo-Angono has successfully organised the Neo-Angono Public Art Festival six times, including this year. Its membership includes Filipino artists from different fields and it has even expanded its network to include artists living in Japan and the United States.
As its title suggested, the conference/workshop was an event where both local and international artists and scholars of art discussed the role public art plays in promoting Angono as a creative city. The promotion of “public art” is central to the idea of creative city development. The term itself was originally used in a broader sense to any painting or sculpture designed to be displayed in public, open spaces but has since come to refer to art “envisaged as part of the life of the community in which it is sited”, according to one definition.
Murals are the most common form of public art but the category also includes monuments, memorials and civic statuary. But it can also include dance, procession, street theatre and even poetry.
Some conference participants read prepared papers that discussed ideas and concepts of public art relative to their field of expertise. Thai art historian Ms Thanavi Chotpradit talked about public tolerance of the public art; Indonesian artist Ms Iani Arahmaiani about the murals in Yogyakarta, Indonesia; Dr Masayuki Sasaki, a professor of urban economics at Osaka City University, about Japanese creative cities; and Filipino artist Professor Bienvenido Lumbera about Filipino literature and history.
Most enlightening was research by Dr Sasaki on globalisation and the shift from traditional, industrial city-centred lifestyles to culture-centred environments in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Dr Sasaki said a new trend of globalisation was that advanced capitalist countries were losing some of their manufacturing base and becoming knowledge- and information-based economies, the key driver of which is creativity, especially artistic and technological creativity.
It was fascinating to hear Dr Sasaki propose the elements that constitute a “creative city”. According to Dr Sasaki, for a city to become a creative city there must be an expansion in both the number and activities of artists, scientists, engineers and craftsmen. There must be an improvement in the quality of life of the residents, in terms of their income, free time and expenditure on culture and entertainment. The city should also have a richness of urban environment and amenities and finally the needs to be an increase in the number of firms and job opportunities in the cultural creative industries, such as film, video, music, art and crafts.

The elements of the creative city do not end there – they also include the development of creative support infrastructure, such as universities, technical schools, research institutions, theatres, libraries, and cultural institutions; preservation of heritage and cultural assets; the activities of the citizens; and finally the presence of a creative governance which allows positive citizen participation, ability of policy making and financial independency.

The talk about the creative cities of Japan prompted me to think about which of my home country’s cities could be promoted as creative cities in the future. From the perspective of a person who is neither an artist, nor an architect or urban developer, I think I have spotted two – Yangon and Mandalay – that have some potential.
Yangon – the country’s commercial centre and former capital – boasts a great deal of both modern and ancient architectural heritage. The city is home to the most-extensive collection of urban colonial architecture in Southeast Asia; most of it is from the early 1900s. Many artists, writers and poets, musicians, art critics and researchers reside in Yangon and it is the centre of the music and film production industries, where most of these companies have their offices. Yangon also has many cultural and religious sites, such as Shwedagon Pagoda.
Another advantage Yangon has is its abundance in public spaces such as gardens, parks, lakes and squares, which could host art installations and festivals. For example, following Cyclone Nargis in 2008, the city’s municipal authorities used trees brought down by Nargis to create garden furniture and traditional sculptures; they are now on display in a wood garden, which was constructed and opened as a public space.

Mandalay could also be considered a possible creative city of Myanmar. The country’s last royal capital before annexation by the British, Mandalay possesses a huge number of cultural heritage sites and serves as a nest for artists and the art and craft industries. Because of its royal status, it was rich in a wide range of artists who performed for the king, including musicians, writers and poets, dramatists, puppeteers and other performing artists. Their descendants and pupils still live and work in the city to this day, and Mandalay boasts a large number of distinguished musicians and artists, such as Nandawshay Saya Tin and Myoma Nyein. The city is also renowned for its many different craft industries, which produce tapestries, woven silks, embroidered goods, carved marble objects, gold leaf and wood carvings. Finally, there are a lot of temples, monasteries and the remains of the royal palace that are all testament to the city’s wealth in quality craftsmen.
Yangon and Mandalay are also the only cities that feature a State School of Fine Art and State School of Music and Drama. Despite their present small capacity when compared with other academic and vocational schools, these institutions produce a sizable number of graduates every year. Some of these artists are able to develop successful careers.

I think both cities are endowed with the potential to become candidates for being creative cities. However, several major changes would have to happen. There would need to be an improvement in the quality of life of the residents, in terms of their income and free time, and we would need a government that could foster creative city development.
Last but not least, there is another requirement: artists’ works would have to break out of the four walls of museums and galleries, to enable the general public to experience art, to feel it and respond to it.

BREAKOUT:

In 2004, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) launched a Creative Cities Network in order to preserve cultural diversity.
So far 19 cities have been registered with the global network, in seven categories: Edinburgh (Scotland), Iowa (US) and Melbourne (Australia) are cities of literature; Bradford (England) is a city of film; Bologna (Italy), Ghent (Belgium), Glasgow (Scotland) and Seville (Spain) are cities of music; Aswan (Egypt), Santa Fe (US) and Kanazawa (Japan) are cities of folk art; Berlin (Germany), Buenos Aires (Argentina), Montreal (Canada), Nagoya, Kobe (Japan) and Shenzhen (China) are cities of design; Lyon (France) is a city of media arts; and Popayan (Colombia) is a city of gastronomy.