Practical Report: Unraveling Regional Revitalization Through Organization - Considering the Nature of "Co-creative Population": Iki City Engagement Community Lab Initiatives

Overview

This is a report by Shunsuke Nakamura of Recruit Works Institute on the concept and practice of "co-creative population," where people from within and outside regions create value together, through the "Engagement Community Lab (ECL)" initiatives implemented in Iki City, Nagasaki Prefecture. ## Key Points ### 1. Overview of ECL (Engagement Community Lab) - **Implementation Period**: Approximately one year from October 2022 - **Purpose**: Exploring methods for different entities to autonomously and distributedly coordinate to form new social structures, using "engagement = proactive involvement willingness" as a focal point - **Participants**: Public-private-academic collaboration including Iki City and other local governments, companies, research institutions, and incorporated associations - **Characteristic**: Practical lab pursuing design of human connections rather than merely generating policy ideas ### 2. Insights from Inter-Municipal Visits - **Fukuoka City**: Ecosystem where entrepreneurs and young people nurture businesses through regional problem-solving, leveraging metropolitan strengths - **Yokosuka City**: Promoting smart school initiatives and human resource development through joint projects with major local companies - **Higashikawa Town**: Sustainable population growth achieved through small co-creative circles starting from being a "photography town" - **Iki City**: Mechanisms for sharing common understanding of issues and promoting participation in solutions through citizen dialogue meetings - **Common Discovery**: Design of "easy-to-understand engagement opportunities" is crucial ### 3. Three-Stage Model of Engagement and Co-creative Population Formation - **Feel**: Gaining contact through opportunities to actually touch and feel the region - **Express**: Sharing and expressing what was felt, deepening relationships with others - **Create**: Co-creating new value and projects through involvement with the region - **Target State**: Progressing from simply "inviting people" and "having relationships" to "working together" - related population = co-creative population ### 4. Specific Mechanism Design - **Null Café**: - A space for serendipitous encounters where people present on themes they "like" and dialogue with local residents - Remote participation with physical presence realized through Temi robots - Second session featured diverse spaces by 9 organizations (Fukushima Prefecture Okuma Town, photographers, mobile sales, private junior-senior high schools, etc.) - **e-Citizenship System (Engagement Citizenship System)**: - Virtual citizenship for non-residents without resident registration - Status system linked to regional currency - Continuous information dissemination and travel/accommodation subsidies for participants - **Fundamental Philosophy of Public Relations**: - Purpose (Why): Increase total happiness of region and people involved with the region - Methodology (How): Create chains of happiness - Specific Measures (What): Implementation of Null Café and e-citizenship system ### 5. ECL Results and Significance - **Practical Results**: Continued and deepened co-creation between ECL participating companies/organizations and Iki City - **Conceptual Results**: Co-creative population is essentially about creating "moments when people's hearts are moved," not systems or target numbers - **Social Significance**: Experiment in re-weaving society based on reasons and forces why people seek connections, rather than institutional gain and loss - **Design Transformation**: From "systems" to "connections," from unidirectional to bidirectional "resonance" This report provides a detailed record of the practical development of the concept of "co-creative population" that goes beyond related population as a new approach to regional revitalization, and the process of creating specific mechanisms for its realization.