Yamagata Creative Cities International Conference 2024
Theme : Sustainable Urban Development through “Literature” × “Creative City”
※ Event Report Released
Join us in considering the future of creative cities through literature
Yamagata City, a member of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network（UCCN）in the field of film, has hosted the Yamagata Creative Cities International Conference, an annual symposium envisaging the future and potentials of creative cities with other member cities.
The theme of this year’s conference is literature. With the participation of specialists of literature from Yamagata as well as UNESCO City of Literature Okayama and Bucheon (South Korea) as panelists, a discussion on how creativity deriving from literary activities will contribute to the sustainable urban development and on what its potentials and significance would be unfolded, notably through sharing experiences of each city.
For more details of the report of this event, please refer to the following link.
Outline of the Conference
Cities in Japan seeking membership in the UNESCO Cities of Literature took part in the conference on site as well as online. The detailed information is as follows.
■Date and Time : 2 p.m. on Wednesday, November 6, 2024
■Venue : YAMAGATA CREATIVE CITY CENTER Q1（Address : 1-5-19 Honcho, Yamagata City）
■Participation : Onsite and online using Zoom application
Program
Part１ Introducing initiatives undertaken by the City of Yamagata, Okayama and Bucheon
Part２ Discussion
Theme 1 How to create new values through literary activities
Theme 2 Industry-academia-government collaboration in the field of literature
Theme 3 Building sustainable cities and communities by promoting creative city approaches in the field of literature
Guests
Panelists
INOUE Hiroyuki
Chairman of Out From Greenery of Konida Town, volunteer group affiliated to the Yamagata City Library.
This organization comprises a secretariat and subgroups in charge of planning, advertising, storytelling and curating in an effort to make a library better for citizens. In addition to providing children with more chances to listen to folktales of Yamagata as well as Japan at the Yamagata City Library, this group visits nursery schools, primary schools and elderly care centers for storytelling. He serves as a director of the NPO National Storytelling Network.
IGARASHI Yudai
Vice president of Hachimonjiya, bookstore with ten shops in Yamagata and Miyagi Prefecture.
YAMAKAWA Takayuki
President and editor of Kibito Publishing Co., Ltd.
Born in Okayama City in 1955. Graduated from the department of Agriculture, Mie University.
After working as a correspondent of Ise Newspaper and editor-in-chief of living information magazines, he founded Kibito Publishing Co., Ltd. in 1995 where he has been in charge of editing and contributing articles to magazines, including “Okayamajin Jaga” and “Story of Cinema Clair”, and published 840 books for the last 29 years. He won the Honorable Mention of Fukutake Culture Award in 2012 and the Okayama City Culture Encouragement Award in 2013. He has also acted as the chairman of the Okayama Creative City of Literature Promotion Council since 2022 and belongs to the Japan Society of Publishing Studies.
Jung Seoyoung
Working as a focal point of Bucheon, UNESCO Creative City of Literature, since 2019, she has communicated with other creative cities on behalf of Bucheon. Her main role is to connect people through a variety of domestic and international projects, to coordinate project schedules, to collect relevant data and to share Bucheon’s literary activities with the rest of the world. She has been engaged to make Bucheon more liveable through language activities from a long-term viewpoint while learning from other UCCN cities.
Facilitator
KUROKI Aruji
Author living in Yamagata City
After winning the fine prize at the 2009 bk1 Kwaidan Contest with his work “Omamori ” and the special award at the 2009 Kaidan Real Story Contest organized by Yoo, scary tale magazine, with “Whisper”, he made a debut with “Shivering – Real Scary Tales” in 2010.
He is an author of “Cruel One Hundred Stories”, “Yamagata Kaidan”, “Cleaner – Punishing Wrestlers in the Ring”, “Soul in Spring – Story of Calming Enraged Gods” and other masterpieces.
■What is Yamagata Creative Cities International Conference?
Yamagata was certified as a member of UNESCO Creative Cities Network in 2017, becoming the first Creative City of Film in Japan. Yamagata is known not only for its films but also for its diverse cultural assets. We aim for sustainable development through cultural activities that leverage these assets.
In the Yamagata Creative Cities International Conference, we aim to strength the cooperation with the UCCN and the other Creative Cities, as well as to create new cultural value and develop sustainable cities as Creative Cities. This conference has been held by inviting representatives from domestic and international Creative Cities under the theme of creative city and film.
Since 2021, in order to utilize our diverse cultural assets, we collaborated with Creative Cities in the UCCN from the selected field other than film, and held a symposium for sustainable urban development by the assets of the selected field. We have discussed about “Food Culture” in 2021, “Design” in 2022 and “Music” in 2023.
This year we pick up “Literature” as the theme, and discuss sustainable urban development through cultural activities as a cultural Creative City with Okayama and Bucheon, UNESCO Creative Cities of Literature.
Organizer：Yamagata City,Yamagata Creative City Promotion Council
Supported by: Fiscal Year 2024 Agency for Cultural Affairs, Government of Japan
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