The Red Room is marking its eighth anniversary this month with 8Fest: four days of fun, creativity and sharing in Taipei, spread out over two weekends, starting on Saturday.
The founders, supporters and followers of Red Room certainly have reason to celebrate, for what began as a once-a-month gathering to share and support a love for the written word and musical talent has become a non-profit organization with an ever-growing schedule of events and a home at the Taiwan Air Force Innovation Base.
The Red Room is the fruit of one of the most devastating typhoons to ever hit Taiwan: Morakot, which ravaged southern Taiwan in early August 2009.
Photo courtesy of Eann
A chance encounter during a post-typhoon clean-up effort in Taitung County between Taipei-raised singer Ayesha Mehta and entrepreneur Ping Chu (朱平) and their discussion about poetry and literature-reading nights and a desire to create a space for sharing led to the first Stage Time and Wine@Red Room event three months later.
Word of mouth and posters encouraged people to bring something they had written or read, or instruments to play, to share — in five-minute allotments — with others.
The once-a-month Saturday night events, in a space provided by Ping — under whose Ripplemaker Foundation the Red Room is now a registered entity — have become a cross-cultural hub that attracts Taiwanese and foreigners, both short-term visitors and long-term expatriates.
Photo courtesy of Eann
The key to the Red Room success are that it is volunteer-organized and community driven, fueled by the desire to share and to support creativity, and perhaps most importantly, to listen.
Each expansion over the years has been created by the people who attended Stage Time and Wine events and were motivated to help do something more: a time and place for children to share their creativity (Stage Time & Juice), invitation-only curated performance evenings (Aside@Red Room), a readers’ theater (Red Room Radio Redux) and art exchanges (Visual Dialogues).
Just as Red Room has grown exponentially, so have birthday parties.
Photo courtesy of JJ Chen
This year’s party is divided into four sections: “Articulate” on Saturday, “Narrate” on Sunday, “Create” on Nov. 25 and “Elevate” on Nov. 26.
“Articulate,” which aims to show the potential of audience-turned-performer events, consists of two parts: Stage Time & Juice for children (and their parents) aged five to 18 from 2pm to 5pm and Crimson Octopus (赤紅八爪魚) from 6:30pm to 10pm, a collaborative performance by randomly assigned groups of people who have to come up with an eight to 10-minute work.
“Narrate,” which runs from 2pm to 9pm, has six events aimed at bringing together publishers, speakers and the public: a book fair; a salon that will host discussions in Mandarin and English on immigration law, the cultural identity of Taiwan’s Indigenous peoples and a holistic look at a sustainable ecosystem; three panel discussions — “How to Move Forward in Taiwan (如何在台灣前進) from 2pm to 3pm, “Mother Island: a Talk on Indigenous Culture Today (母親島嶼：現今原住民文化的對話) from 4pm to 5pm and “Think East Grow Regenerate (思、食、農、再生) from 6pm to 7pm — a screening of the documentary Apology & Justice: Voices from Taiwan (道歉與正義：台灣之聲) that begins at 3:15pm and a performance, A Tale of Two People (兩個人的故事), that begins at 5:15pm.
“Create,” the fifth “Artists Bridge the Gap,” is a day of live painting and music that begins at 11am and ends at 10pm.
“Elevate” is aimed at blending cultures and art forms and encouraging creativity with a workshop for children, a workshop on creative journaling, an “Art Explosion” workshop and a fashion show with live music that will feature the work of young designers using “upcycled” materials, including Meghna Nayak, whose LataSita line is based in Kolkata, India.
All of the 8Fest events are at the Red Room International Village, Taipei Air Force Innovation Base (空總創新基地), 177, Jianguo S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市建國南路一段177號).
While many of the activities are free, there are patronage charges for the workshops, performances and the fashion show and some events require advance registration — such as those who want to participate in the Crimson Octopus.
Registration details, prices and more information on 8Fest can be found on the Web at redroomtaipei.com.
This story has been amended since it was first published to correct the spelling of LataSita.
The Taipei Times last week reported that the rising share of seniors in the population is reshaping the nation’s housing markets. According to data from the Ministry of the Interior, about 850,000 residences were occupied by elderly people in the first quarter, including 655,000 that housed only one resident. H&B Realty chief researcher Jessica Hsu (徐佳馨), quoted in the article, said that there is rising demand for elderly-friendly housing, including units with elevators, barrier-free layouts and proximity to healthcare services. Hsu and others cited in the article highlighted the changing family residential dynamics, as children no longer live with parents,
Oct 20 to Oct 26 After a day of fighting, the Japanese Army’s Second Division was resting when a curious delegation of two Scotsmen and 19 Taiwanese approached their camp. It was Oct. 20, 1895, and the troops had reached Taiye Village (太爺庄) in today’s Hunei District (湖內), Kaohsiung, just 10km away from their final target of Tainan. Led by Presbyterian missionaries Thomas Barclay and Duncan Ferguson, the group informed the Japanese that resistance leader Liu Yung-fu (劉永福) had fled to China the previous night, leaving his Black Flag Army fighters behind and the city in chaos. On behalf of the
I was 10 when I read an article in the local paper about the Air Guitar World Championships, which take place every year in my home town of Oulu, Finland. My parents had helped out at the very first contest back in 1996 — my mum gave out fliers, my dad sorted the music. Since then, national championships have been held all across the world, with the winners assembling in Oulu every summer. At the time, I asked my parents if I could compete. At first they were hesitant; the event was in a bar, and there would be a lot
Smart speakers are a great parenting crutch, whether it be for setting a timer (kids seem to be weirdly obedient to them) or asking Alexa for homework help when the kids put you on the spot. But reader Katie Matthews has hacked the parenting matrix. “I used to have to nag repeatedly to get the kids out of the house,” she says. “Now our Google speaker announces a five-minute warning before we need to leave. They know they have to do their last bits of faffing when they hear that warning. Then the speaker announces, ‘Shoes on, let’s go!’ when
RSS