The Education and Culture Ministry is inviting youths to learn science and arts in a five-day camp at Prambanan Temple in Yogyakarta.

The Education and Culture Ministry’s culture director general, Hilmar Farid, understands well that today’s young generation is seeking different things from the generations before them.

“Lots of people say that today’s youths do not care about their culture and are clueless about history,” he said at a recent discussion held by Tempo Media Group in Jakarta.

“But if we look at them now, it’s interesting because once they save up some money, they often go traveling and visit far-off places to see the cultural traditions and create their own reportage on what they see.”

Hilmar also noted that millennials responded to culture in a different way to previous generations. Rather than writing scholarly articles, he says, they prefer to do things quickly.

“It’s not that they don’t care, it’s just that they have a different way to show that they care, like finding out quickly what is relevant to them.”

Thus, the Youth Culture Camp (KBKM) was born. The camp, to be held from July 21 to 25 at Prambanan Temple in Yogyakarta, is intended for 18 to 28-year-olds interested in science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics (STEAM).

New initiative: Hilmar Farid (fourth left) says that the upcoming Youth Culture Camp is his latest innovation to pique the interest of millennials to learn science and arts.

New solution to new problem

The KBKM, which resembles a summer camp, was initiated during the Indonesian Cultural Congress, which was held in December last year.

“At the event, we felt that the space for the younger generation to express their thoughts and aspirations was very limited.”

“In past congresses, they’re basically an exhibition for scientific papers and professors, and the youth are often too intimidated even to ask questions,” Hilmar said.

The camp is expected to pique the youth’s interest in learning science, and also learning more about Indonesian culture.

“Past approaches tend to focus on STEM, but we wanted to include art as well. The temple will be in full view from the camping grounds, and we hope that the rich cultural history from our ancestors will influence the participants,” he explained.

The camp’s quota is set at 650 participants who will be divided into 130 groups of five. Those interested in joining will have to come up with their own initiatives, to be described when they register online at kbkm.daftarkan.online.

From the camp, the 12 best initiatives will be selected to undergo supervision for a few months. The participants will be given a chance to present their projects at the Education and Culture Ministry’s National Culture Week event in October.

Sacred: NgoJak members look at a century-old baptismal font at GPIB Pniel, better known as Ayam Church, in Central Jakarta during their tour.

Community-based initiative

Also at the discussion, NgoJak cofounder Novita Anggraini spoke of her community’s activities to preserve culture.  

NgoJak, short for Ngopi Jakarta, was started as a writing platform in 2013 before evolving into a city touring community.

Most NgoJak members are professionals who came to work in Jakarta.

“There comes a time when we will miss our hometown and start to be tired of life in the big city. We get bored because we move within our comfort zones: when we commute from home to work in high-rise buildings, we’re coddled in comfort from the traffic but we don’t know how people interact outside,” Novita said.

“We thought: we have to drag these people out of their comfort zones to learn together in reading the city.”

According to her, reading the character of a city is important because people tend to be dismissive of the city once they find a heterogeneous community.

“It’s like, ‘this isn’t my city, so it’s okay for me to drive carelessly and throw rubbish everywhere [...] However, this isn’t the case, as it is our home as soon as we set foot inside the city.”

From this, Novita and her friends in 2016 set out to realize the stories written on the website into a face-to-face event at the Ciliwung River, which is known to flood from time to time.

“People tend to say the flooding is due to the deluge of water from Bogor.”

“Then we put this on its head: ‘why do we believe that flooding is caused by the actions of a small group of people? Why don’t we evaluate what we should have done before the flooding started?’” Novita said.

With NgoJak, the community started their journey in Kampung Karadenan in Bogor, West Java, and made their way to Depok to see the remnants of old colonial influences. Their latest exploration on May 21 took them to several mosques in Pekojan, Bandengan and Angke, West Jakarta.

“We did a lot of walking, met new friends and visited the many diverse communities [around Ciliwung]. From our discussions for the last three years, we’ve found that there’s very little we know about Jakarta. 

“We believe we can discover a lot through walking, as we can know a lot about a city’s condition and interact with locals.”

City explorers: Started as a writing platform in 2013, NgoJak, short for Ngopi Jakarta, evolved into a touring community that invites people to explore historic yet lesser-known places in Jakarta.

— Photos courtesy of NgoJak