For those who have been following Bangkok Design Week over the years, there may have been moments of wondering about the more subtle benefits of holding festivals year after year, on top of helping to liven up the host city and propel the creative economy within communities during the times of the festivals. What other benefits are there?

Before arriving at this year’s Bangkok Design Week, we’d like to introduce the word ‘Festivalisation’ – the use of a festival concept and experience-building to drive the dynamics of a city. The goal is to bring about gains that are sustained even after the festival itself ends, without limiting events to one-time occurrences whose influences end when the events themselves conclude. A focus is on inspiring people and the events’ host locales to continue driving activities in the long term. This has been one of Bangkok Design Week’s pursuits all along.

‘Festivals’ Revive Neglected Spaces and Give New Chapters to Their Stories

One of the methods for festivalisation is creation of new experiences in existing spaces. It is a pity that many interesting spots in Bangkok have been neglected over the years. One such spot is Thailand’s first large water tower, situated at Maen Si Intersection. The water tower and its adjacent sibling tower have been neglected for some 20 years despite the location having great historical and architectural value as well as allure.

The ‘Prapa Maen Si’ project by the Urban Ally group opens up this space to facilitate interactions between people in the locale and those from outside. The Festivalisation concept is used to create, in this urban public area, a new experience that responds to the requirements of all groups of people. In addition to reviving this previously neglected spot on BKKDW festival days, the project also demonstrated to people the potential of this public space to serve as a destination for diverse activities, such as the Krungthep Klang Plaeng outdoor movie screening activity. Aside from attracting visitors and opening up new opportunities for a locality, these activities generate economic value and promote people’s sense of belonging to their city.

‘Festivals’ Help Connect People, Promoting Value for a Locale

At its heart, a festival serves as a medium connecting diverse groups of people, including but not limited to designers, creators and those who live in the locality. These people then exchange what they know and make use of the shared ideas to create value for the locale. This enables localities to initiate their own long-term revival drives.

An example can be seen in the Pak Khlong Talat locale, long known as Bangkok’s largest and oldest flowers-selling area. Assoc. Prof. Dr. Supitcha ‘ Nong’ Tovivich at the Faculty of Architecture, Silpakorn University has been using this locality as a site for examining the conservation of vernacular architecture and community development. As local information and updates were already being provided by The Humans of Flower Market Facebook page, this presented an opportunity to integrate the Pak Khlong Talat project as part of Bangkok Design Week to expand on the joint collaborative efforts between designers, urban developers and the community. This culminated in ‘Pak Khlong Talat Pop-Up’, where many formats of artwork such as installation art, photo exhibits and AR mixed media were showcased. The aim was to attract tourists with the design festival, with the expectation that the visitors will purchase flowers from the shops in Pak Khlong Talat to bring home. This opens up new opportunities and generates new value that helps connect the locality with people through multiple facets, making Pak Khlong Talat more than just an area for trade.

‘Festivals’ Help Garner Ideas to Make a City More Livable

The goal of Bangkok Design Week is to be more than a festival that delivers enjoyment and impressive experiences. The festival also serves as a space for promulgating discussions on urban design and planning, enabling the talks to expand beyond the design circle and making the topics of creativity and design more accessible to diverse people.

The Re-Vendor Charoen Krung 32 project was a pilot model for the management of street food stalls along the ‘creative economy area’ in Soi Charoen Krung 32. The team here was led by architecture firm Cloud-floor, whose area of focus was urban and public space development. The team took advantage of the BKKDW festival to invite stakeholders involved with managing the street food scene – representatives of the public sector, municipal law enforcement officials, food sellers and street food buyers – to provide their input. The ideas garnered from all parties were used to create an experimental model applied in Soi Charoen Krung 32 during the festival period. People who visit during the festival time had the opportunity to try out prototypes and give their feedback so the project could be improved. In this manner, a festival can promote people’s participation in giving ideas for urban development so this task would not fall on any specific group of people and benefit from everybody’s involvement.

‘Festivals’ Restore Dying Wisdoms and Make Them Easily Accessible

One underlying merit of holding festivals is the fact they can help recover a community’s cultural heritages which have been disappearing as time passed. A communal cultural heritage that is close to being lost can be brought back and given wide recognition once more. An example is the activity of the Sense of Nang Loeng group, which has restored the Chatri play into a contemporary form. Restoring the theater art of the Nang Loeng Market community – touted as Thailand’s first land-based market – involved rekindling the identity of Nang Loeng area as the place of origin for numerous Thai music teachers and performance troupes in the past. This was aimed at garnering the attention of newer generations of people and introducing people to another aspect of the Nang Loeng area.

The available public space was renovated into a temporary exhibition, which expanded on the locale’s fame as a food destination. Professional designers and creators were invited to participate and take action alongside the people of the community. This provided local artists and sellers with opportunities to express themselves and earn income, both during the festival and at later times when the endeavor would shift toward a long-term community development project that would concretely drive the local economy.

‘Festivals’ Foster Networks Linking Creators and Promoting Collaboration

Festivals also serve as important stages for those who work as creators in all fields to meet and have exchanges. These exchanges may involve the creators updating their awareness of trends and new ideas, or knowledge of emerging design directions or noteworthy projects that are being pursued by other designers or studios. This leads to the creation of learning networks and potential future collaborations.

Importantly, Bangkok Design Week is not restricted to the designers circle and anyone can participate. This illustrates how the festival can help propagate knowledge and awareness of developments within the design circle, enabling these to ripple out toward society at large. As greater understanding and awareness are increasingly realized, designing and creating are no longer tasks that fall on specific individuals. Everyone in society can help contribute ideas and take action.

These are some of the results stemming from the festival-holding concept that has continually been adopted by Bangkok Design Week. For the upcoming BKKDW 2024, we will be returning under the theme ‘Livable Scape: The More People Act, the Better the City’. We’d like to invite everybody to come together to reassemble Bangkok into a more livable city than before. Regardless of who you are, we believe everyone with the will to bring about change to the city can take action, starting from the small matters that are close at hand.

–

Bangkok Design Week 2024

Livable Scape

คนยิ่งทำ เมืองยิ่งดี

27 Jan – 4 Feb 2024

#BKKDW2024

#BangkokDesignWeek

#LivableScape