Village-Based Cultural Advancement and Empowerment

Measures of development success that only focus on economic growth have eroded the network of mutual help among villagers and the local wisdom that grows from village community practices, creating new problems such as environmental degradation and social inequality.

To overcome this adverse impact, the government has started the villagebased cultural advancement program to develop the village based on village potential as the primary capital for a more comprehensive development than just economic development. In this way, we hope that there will be endogenous growth that comes from the village’s potential.

Capturing People’s Imagination

Throughout history, the village has played a role as the melting pot of cultural interactions among the people of Indonesia and has kept the memory of the social life values. We have passed down the values for generations. The village is the smallest government unit and is the cradle of Indonesian cultural identity.

The village has enormous potential in terms of natural, human, tangible, and intangible culture, and even historical potential that can develop the rural community according to the imagination of its people about the village’s future.

Villagers’ imagination is a reliable guide for contextual development. Villagers have more right to talk about the future of their village as they directly experience the concrete struggles of rural life.

How do the villagers want their village to develop into what they envision? How can local businesses work together to make it happen? That is the starting point for endogenous development.

Through the villagers’ imagination, all cultural entities in the village are involved, from children to the elderly, both women and men from various work backgrounds. Inclusive in it are people with disabilities and other vulnerable persons.

Based on the villagers’ imagination, we executed our village-based cultural advancement in 3 stages. The first stage is the identification of the culturalpotential stage, the second is the development stage, and the third is the utilization stage.

Implementing the whole process is based on recognizing the resources owned by the villagers. Thus, the three stages always uphold the principles of social inclusion, equality, independence, sustainability, practicality, and participation.

The Nation’s Cultural Commons

Sometimes we don’t realize that we have great potential. The same goes for villages. In the identification stage, we invite the community to rediscover and recognize their cultural heritage, the tangible and intangible, and the history of the rural village and the natural environment. The identification process also mapped community groups that support the sustainability of these various cultural practices.

We expect the participatory mapping concept to capture the village’s potential and existing problems. In addition, this stage also maps out the community’s expectations about the future of their rural community. Subsequently, we created a joint dialogue to plan the development of all potentials through an action plan.

The second stage of the program is the development stage. At this stage, we developed the culture potential map according to the Law on the Advancement of Culture, among others, an assessment of the possibility of cultural innovation. We then carried out diversity enrichment, efforts to encourage dialogue and interaction with people of other cultures.

The development of this potential aims to solve various problems in the village through cultural means, such as the solution to the problem of food security through using traditional, environmentally friendly agricultural methods and local rice as a genetic resource. Villagers with all elements in the village community work together through various activities. This effort aims to get social agreements in formulating an action plan for cultural development through village gatherings, village discussion forums, organizing joint cultural seminars, participatory maps’ alignment, and deepening understanding of the ecosystem of cultural potentials.

The third stage is the utilization stage, which aims to increase cultural resilience, intercultural collaboration, community welfare, and village character development. At this stage, villagers can identify and select the program’s strategic partners, plan program financing, and form a catalyst organization.

We then synchronized the final action plan with the results of the village-level Deliberation of Development Planning (MUSRENBANG) to get the right to use the village fund. The publication of village potentials comes after this step, such as through films and books, as well as reintroducing village culture to children through local content education, activating art studios as a cultural space for villagers, and so on.

Villages of a Distinct Local Character

Village-based cultural advancement is not the same as turning all villages into “tourism villages.” Indonesia has recently widely practiced this type of village management. It is as if the cultural potential of a rural community is and can only be a tourism attraction. The reality shows that the more independent village is an agricultural village, not a commercial tourism village.

Therefore, in implementing villagebased cultural advancement programs, always remember that development is contextual. It does not use a single formula or model applicable to all villages.

We designed the village-based cultural advancement to empower villages by developing using their potential and encouraging village collaboration. The work is networking, capitalizing on all the social networks that connect each rural community. The goal is not to turn rural villages into urban areas but to build free associations that bring together cultural strengths from various rural villages for national cultural advancement.

(Maya Krishna, Senior Cultural Administrator, Directorate of Cultural Development and Utilization, Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology)