2019
Monday
October
14

JEONJU (COR): JEONJU WORLD SLOWNESS FORUM & AWARDS 2019

Jeonju City

THEME: Slowness & Happiness

DATE: Tuesday – Wednesday, October 1-2, 2019  4352

VENUE: National Intangible Heritage Center 

HOSTED: Cittaslow Jeonju

ORGANIZED: Cittaslow Corea Network

SUPPORTED: National Assembly of Korea / Taepyeong Salt + Maeil Dairies + evezary

 

Main participants of the Jeonju Slowness Forum & Awards 2019

FORUM CORE MESSAGES

[PRESENTATION 1] Mr. Pier Giorgio Oliveti, Secretary General of the Cittaslow International, ITALIA

Cittaslow International is a not-for-profit organization founded in Italy in 1999. Cittaslow is a project that would not be successful without the support, participation and cooperation of citizens, big cities, small cities, public institutions, local businesses, cultural institutions, schools, artists, and volunteers. In Europe, 41.2% of the population lives in large cities, and the quality of life is deteriorating due to the giganticism of big cities. In Europe, 29% of the population is at risk of poverty and social alienation, and large cities in Germany, Belgium, and Netherlands are at risk of exhaustion. Cittaslow Supporters of Busan in Korea, Barcelona in Spain, Enghien in ​​Brussels, and Izmir in Turkey are working on a Cittaslow-related project in big cities.

The best practices around the world through the Jeonju Forum & Awards

Cittaslow Jeonju in Corea is an excellent example of reflective modernity. Through the revitalization project, Cittaslow Górowo Iławeckie in Poland renewed the cellars in the town hall building into a meeting place to serve the local community, recreated a recreational and sensory park around the pond in the city, reconstructed the culture center, and restored the Młynówka river basin. Cittaslow Seferihisar, Turkey founded the Children Municipality to foster future citizens of Seferihisar to become a Child Friendly City sponsored by UNICEF. The Children Municipality’s structure is the same with the Seferihisar municipality with the mayor, deputy mayors, assembly and assembly members for children’s participation to politics and local government.

Cittaslow - Innovation through Traditions

Inspired by the efficiency of participation of member countries of the Cittaslow International, we are promoting innovation with a tradition of “integration” through the creation of community networks in each country. Cittaslow is moving toward its goal of being a ‘vaccine’ to the fast-paced modernity. The role of local governance is highly valued to protect towns from unsustainable development.

Network and web

Territorial connections are very important for employment and municipal development. Enhancing connection and accessibility means more than just direct fast access, but more importantly, the networking of towns; information service on major transportation routes, route planning, and integration via the web for tourism. The five mayor covenants for fair and sustainable happy towns to solve political and technical issues are as follows.

1. Increase connection and accessibility: Network and web

2. Strengthen tangible and intangible assets for communities and visitors

3. Develop social relations and prevent marginalization

4. Support businesses and youth enterprises

5. Strengthen participatory governance and institutional networks to initiate innovative projects

The three main points international Cittaslow member towns will focus on

1. Sustainability for environment and society

2. Reflection of the conservation and innovation limits

3. Responsibility for collaboration between citizens and politicians in joint decision-making.

As the beings who live every day, with the right to follow nature and rhythm, we make the following four points the cores of Cittaslow, under the premise that there is no good life and no good citizens without ‘Slowness’.

1.Circular economy: Participate in and practice the circular economy with active citizenship and citizen’s awakening beyond spending less and recycling.

2.Resilience: Strengthen our identity and heritage without destroying ourselves

3.Social justice: Devote community energy to achieving common goals by healing division and dissolving prejudices through pre-political action for the daily well-being of human society, 

4.Sustainability and culture: Strive for the sustainability of social resources through integration, development of local cultural heritage, and responsibility sharing Cittaslow, as well as the protection of natural environment to prevent climate change.

 

[PRESENTATION 2] Prof. Frédéric Gros, Professor of University Paris-Est Créteil, FRANCE

Prof. Gros mentions three things in this forum. First, the great thinkers, such as Jean Jacques Rousseau, Henry David Thoreau, and Friedrich W. Nietzsche, were walking to muse and seek inspiration as one of the essential activities that are internal conditions for their writing. Nietzsche says “I always repeat the truth in me. The truth walks and continues in me”. The repetition is reiteration and recovery. Repeating the walk is to appreciate the landscape with the whole body and “to make it alive”. Many of these repetitions are based on the fascination of slowness. In this sense, slowness must be re-learned as a goal of practice today. Also, Plato says that a walker’s body contributes to make the landscape “alive”. Walking that represents the fascinating slowness is not a sport. It does not require skills, rules, scores or training.

The walker permeates the landscape. The whole body of the walker goes into the landscape, and the landscape creates a gentle sense of harmony with light, wind and soil. Walking alone allows you to regain a very fundamental relationship with the world connected to your being. Walking makes you fall into existence. Again, the key to walking is slowness, that adds depth to space, stretches time, and allows you to appreciate the landscape. Speed ​​increases superficial activities, but slow strengthens the existence. I think the solidarity between the body of the walker and the landscape he passes through is the gratitude that comes in the form of the joy he feels peculiarly. The walker can feel the beauty of the landscape as a reward for his efforts. It takes place through the mutual vibration, the exchange of spirit between the body of the walker and the beauty of the landscape. The landscape is composed of beauty, colors and scents, and our bodies are energized by walking and finding a surprise.

The second question is why we walk? The two main purposes are freedom and loneliness.

That is a special meaning of paradoxical freedom or paradoxical loneliness. Paradoxical freedom is because the action of walking involves a series of constraints, that are physical constraints like rhythm, gravity, fatigue, and basic needs. There are road constraints of the state, length, and inclination as well as weather constraints such as weather hazards. Walking despite any rein is a moment of freedom and emancipation from the constraints of the haste and overwork of modern society. Walking is liberation from the obsession with production, and from all the technology that spreads the illusion of existence through screens, access, email or social media network. Like Thoreau’s words, we always go west, toward the wild and the renewable energy. Every walk is a small transition and a small spiritual movement. Also walking is understood as a paradoxical experience of loneliness. Walking is inevitably a lonely experience in confronting one’s body. There is endurance, desire, pain, and suffering in the solitude associated with one’s body. And we feel lonely in the crowd or in the city because we feel alienated, rejected or ignored. But this is the loneliness of openness because walking in loneliness allows me to be left solely in my own rhythm and afford not only myself but also the world.

Third, there are different styles of walking. It may be more secret than the first two purposes, but it’s a special form of fatigue. Fernando Pessoa’s book “Livro do Desassossego (The Book of Restlessness, 1982)” distinguishes three types of tiredness: body, mind, and soul. The exhaustedness is from the tiredness of the body caused by accumulated physical training, the fatigue of the mind that results from broken or weakened mind by very intense emotions and severely repeated tensions and anxieties, and the intellectual fatigue that you may feel because you cannot help identifying everlasting human folly and the corruption of human history and have to find meaning in meaninglessness.

 

Summarized and concluded by Prof. bon sohn Coordinator, Cittaslow Corea Network

 

AWARDEE’S EXCELLENT CASES

Mr. Roland Lazzeri, Mayor of Cittaslow Salorno, ITALIA

Youth Workshop

The municipality of Salorno launched an innovative project to promote the political participation of its young citizens. The "Youth Workshop Salorno" is the result of a cooperation between the municipality and Eurac Research.

In the "Youth Workshop Salorno" young adults work with citizens and policy makers to find new ideas and solutions to improve the quality of life of the community. For the first time, a new kind of decision-making process is being attempted, which has been adapted to the needs of the municipality of Salorno, but which could not be applied in other municipalities.

Salurno Slow Festival

On 8 and 9 June 2019, Salurn will host the Salurno Slow Festival, an event dedicated to food, culture and entertainment. About 20 Cittaslow producers from South Tyrol and various regions of Italy will be represented with various typical delicacies. The event includes various activities for the whole family: a creative market, several exhibitions, a "climate coffee", lectures on garden and permaculture, workshops for young and old. 

Highlights of the Salurno Slow Festival are the show cooking on the town hall square. Chefs and gourmets take turns on a show stage. The partner of this event is a flagship company from Salurn: Jokodomus. For the event, special recipes with local products were created, which are recooked live on stage.