Break the Cultural Wall: Bottom-up Co-Creation of an Urban Interactive Installation for Challenging Typical Cultural Stereotypes

Initiated and organised by Chii Xu and supported by Gemeente Rotterdam, ‘Next Stop Chinatown’, a community-based one-day city walk event, was successfully held at Goethe-Institut Niederlande Rotterdam on the 5th of May, 2023. As the project designer and co-creation expert, I worked closely with the volunteers and GrowithU, an NL-based organisation specialising in psychology, physiology, communication, and professional development to facilitate personal growth. Together, we developed an interactive installation that enabled participants from diverse backgrounds to share their stories/opinions and challenge typical cultural stereotypes by flipping over and writing postcards. The experiment effectively engaged participants in knowledge exchange and co-making, thus enhancing mutual understanding and connecting a variety of people. Through reflection, we identified areas for future improvement, such as involving volunteers at an earlier decision-making stage and prompting participants with cultural generalisation instead of stereotypes. Overall, I am thrilled to have contributed to such a meaningful community-based project and look forward to similar initiatives in the future.