Public cultural spaces serve both as havens for residents’ cultural life and solid foundations for local cultural inheritance and innovation. Shendang, a charming ancient water town, is leveraging its cultural “soft power” to forge a development “hard core”. It has built a comprehensive cultural network, innovated service models, and revitalized indigenous cultural elements, paving a unique cultural revitalization path that blends harmoniously traditional and modern elements.

Weaving cultural networks with perfect service facilities available to all

Shendang Barn, a nostalgic landmark witnessing the town’s agricultural development history, was upgraded in late April 2024 to a cultural industrial park for cultural creativity, entertainment and tourism. Since its operation, it has drawn tens of thousands of visitors during holidays.

As a “new cultural landmark” of Haiyan, Public Reading Week & “Reading Yu Hua in Shendang” was organized by the local government in Shendang Barn several days ago. Focusing on “Yu Hua Literary Map”, the Reading Week featured immersive experiences, creative markets and letter-writing interactions, attracting readers from the Yangtze River Delta for a dialogue between literature and this water town.

With the Barn as a cultural hub, Shendang has established a culture service facility network with one core and multiple spots. Each of its 11 administrative villages now averages 2.2 cultural venues, creating a 15-minute quality cultural life circle.

Demand-driven resource allocation is the heart of local development strategy. “Shendang Barn follows a ‘public services plus commercial zone’ model,” said an official. “ Based on the existing layout, it will organize sports events and parent-child activities, and create a better entrepreneurship environment and leisure zones. Our goal is to build a living barn-based culture space.”

Diverse services provided to meet people’s cultural needs

A robust public cultural network is a solid foundation for continuous cultural innovation. The town has established a series of distinctive cultural brands and leveraged its culture resources, significantly enhancing the appeal of its public culture services.

The Barn Culture Industry Park focuses on cultural creativity and tourism and has attracted crowds of tourists and culture enthusiasts. Regularly, salons and book reading events are held in and famous writers, scholars and readers are invited to Yu Hua Literary Space, a new landmark integrating literature exhibitions, cultural exchanges, creative incubation and leisure, which now has become a cultural highlight in local cultural industrial development.

The culture halls of each village also play a vital role. They serve as venues for reading, performances, etc., to meet people’s diverse cultural needs. In 2024 alone, Shendang organized over 400 cultural events, which enriched residents’ cultural life, and strengthened their cohesion and cultural identity.

Grassroots power: cultural administrators’ efforts

Grassroots cultural administrators are key to bridging the “last mile” toward public cultural services. In Shendang, they elevate their roles through learning, innovation, etc. to provide better services for communities.

Several days ago, a literary lecture was held in this town’s culture hall. Zhou Weida, a researcher from Yu Hua Center of Zhejiang Normal University, delivered a speech with the title of “Yu Hua and Shendang”. He analyzed the relation between grassroots administrators and classic literature, and the “localized” nature of grassroots cultural work. It is not only a literature appreciation lecture, but also the one on how to turn classic literature into grassroots culture service resources.

Besides, these administrators have proactively demonstrated their initiative and creativity. They take the initiative to survey residents’ needs and collaborate with artists and volunteers to design tailored activities such as reading and intangible cultural heritage experiences. In terms of innovating culture service modes, they’ve established online culture platforms and tapped into local culture halls to organize characteristic festival events like “Our Festival”, “Spring Bud Project” and rural artistic performances to enrich people’s cultural life and energize grassroots cultural prosperity.