天美影视

Creating and disseminating knowledge by utilizing cultural resources in the city
Making the "Lab/Atelier Training" more attractive and popular, mainly at media hubs in the city

Although the grant period has ended, this project continues as an in-house project at our university.

Overview of the initiative

The economies of developed countries are sustained by selling knowledge. Since knowledge often comes from a unique cultural background, the need for cultural education has been strongly advocated in recent years. In order to meet this need, our university established School of Cultural and Creative Studies in 2008. The school aims to produce talented people who can comprehensively manage culture and disseminate it both domestically and internationally. A symbolic subject of this is the new experiential education program "Lab-Atelier Training" (hereinafter "Lab Training"), in which students participate in collaborative projects between faculty and cultural institutions outside the university. Through Lab Training, students will gain hands-on experience in the field of creation.

The success of the lab training depends first on "offering an attractive project" and second on "establishing a learning participation system" that is familiar to students. The former will be achieved through cooperation with first-class cultural institutions around Aoyama Campus, while the latter will be achieved by using a "dedicated website with SNS functions" for students' advance learning and communication with the university and cultural institutions, in combination with a "master plan board" as a real communication tool (see Figure 1). This initiative is an attempt to get the above-mentioned educational program off to a smooth start within the framework of the Program for Promoting High-Quality University Education.

Implementation report and results

Offering attractive projects

In this initiative, we decided to take advantage of the advantage of being located in the city center, surrounded by first-class cultural resources and an information dissemination hub, and prepare a cutting-edge, immersive project that would stimulate students' motivation to learn. Specifically, in line with the undergraduate course of "International Culture, Art and Culture, Urban Culture, and Media Culture," the fields to be tackled in the practical training will be "Peace, Art, Environment, and Media," and based on the results of our own survey of cultural facilities and educational resources around Aoyama Campus, we have decided to seek out the United Nations University, TWS (Tokyo Wonder Site), Tokyo Metropolitan Government, and NHK as the main collaborating cultural institutions (see Figure 2).

Development of a learning participation system

Regardless of the project, students will need a considerable amount of preparation time to undertake it. Also, because a high level of management ability is required from the beginning, this initiative was designed with the students' activities in mind, starting six months before enrollment, and the ideal way of proceeding was determined. In particular, with consideration given to students' pre-learning, we worked on two points: building a "dedicated website with SNS functions" to facilitate smooth communication between students planning to enroll and faculty and cultural institutions, and setting up a "Master Plan Board" as a real communication tool within the university (see Figures 3 and 4). By utilizing these, pre-learning and promotion efficiency of the project improved. Students could use the website to exchange information with faculty and cultural institutions, and obtain the necessary data from the site, significantly reducing the burden of the initiative. Meanwhile, the Master Plan Board visualized information and used it in management and workshops.

Information dissemination and penetration into society

Aoyama Studio (a media hub in the city) was completed in 2009 and became the base for this initiative. A project room and media editing room were placed on the second floor as space for laboratory training, and student activities there were linked to the NHK satellite studio on the first floor and the underground hall, improving the speed of information dissemination and penetration into society. In addition, the progress of the initiative was announced in a timely manner through the Education GP Symposium held every autumn, local events, and the "Education GP Report" distributed at the end of the fiscal year, and the results of this initiative were incorporated into various NHK program plans, making an effort to widely disseminate information.

Lab training courses offered

Since the establishment of School of Cultural and Creative Studies, it has progressed steadily, as shown in the figure below (see Figure 5).

Figure 5: Lab training courses offered