Chinese Name: 街角巷弄 | 黃富隆
Time of Establishment: 2019
Location: Sanchih District, New Taipei City, Taiwan
Did You Know?
Huang Fu-long is the founder and design director of the company DPI Design, as well as being heavily involved in community building. One manifestation of his passion for community building is the founding of New Taipei City's Sanchih Corner, a project which is focused on working to encourage local youth to rediscover a sense of local identity while also revitalizing the Sanchih area in northern Taiwan. In 2021, Sanchih Corner was a recipient of funding from the Ministry of Culture program known as the Youth Village Cultural Development Project for their "Slow Art Creation Project (慢慢藝術創生計畫)."
Huang Fu-long is the founder of DPI Design, as well as being the holder of a Master’s degree in the field of creative design from the National Yunlin University of Science and Technology in central Taiwan. DPI Design not only provides commercial design services, but also serves as a "community planning" team of sorts for the local community in Sanchih District, New Taipei City, and has extensive experience in executing community building for local children, youth, farmers, arts & culture, and environmental issues.
Since 2013, Huang Fu-long and team members Liao Wei-chi (廖韋齊) and Chou Cha-yi (周佳儀) have been working to conduct on-site surveys and studies in the district. In addition to the unevenly distributed demographic structure of the local population, they found that the few young children who remained in the district were mostly from underprivileged families and grew up with inadequate resources and support, leading to social problems at various levels.
In 2014, Huang was selected by the Ministry of Culture’s Youth Village Cultural Development Project to provide assistance in the transformation of Shengchun Lumber (盛椿企業木工廠) in Beigang Township, Yunlin County, into a fully functioning tourist factory. The end result - Beigang Spring Life Museum (北港春生活博物館) - has gone on to become one of the top 100 community highlights in Yunlin County and subsequently obtained Cultural and Creative Industries Certification from the Ministry of Economic Affairs for 2015 through 2018. Since then, Huang has continued to take an active part in community development work.
In 2016, Huang and his team worked with the Fucheng Community Development Association of Sanchih District to establish an after-school program and provide classes on local character and culture for elementary school children, including sewing and painting classes. Through this, they hoped that while providing some after-school company for the children, they could also pass on some of Sanchih’s culture and cultivate a sense of local identity. That same year, DPI Design joined the Ministry of Education Youth Development Administration's U-start Program and was selected as one of the program's outstanding teams. They were also recognized by the judging team as having the "spirit of social enterprise," receiving an additional social enterprise bonus prize.
Following the community after-school program, in March 2019, DPI Design, together with the Fucheng Community Development Association of Sanchih District, local youth, and volunteers, created a local community classroom: Sanchih Corner. The function of this site is to provide a learning space for underprivileged children, present a variety of local knowledge, create job opportunities in community development and design, and, ultimately, establish a local product brand. In addition, DPI Design has set up a Sanchih Corner Facebook page to share a little bit of the children's daily routines of classes and activities with community residents. That same year, the "Old Stories Maker Action Plan (故里行動者計畫)" was launched to focus on more thorough passing on of local skills and memories, as well as on developing workshop content to create local cultural strongholds for sustainable community development.
In 2021, Sanchih Corner went on to launch the "Slow Art Creation Project," building on their experience with the after-school program to extend various community business services and complement community needs, including the creation of spotlight festivals and the development of community products. The ultimate goal is to enable the project team and partner communities to engage in sustainable business operations, serving as the support for the sustainable development of the community in the future. The project emphasizes getting everyone involved in the work of the community, and the team has already started to have an influence on the local community. through the Sanchih Corner Facebook page, they issue calls to action, inviting groups that have not yet joined the community project, including the immigrant residents, seniors, and youth, to join in. Through this project, they hope to expand partnerships in social development in Sanchih District and link all related organizations in the area by promoting overall community building at the township level. The Slow Art Creation Project has even been honored by the Ministry of Culture through its operation: the Youth Village Culture program.
(Photo Credit: Huang Fu-long)