2023 Romantic Route 3 HAKKA Art Festival - Falabidbog

✸Background and Core Challenges✸
This is the first art festival in Taiwan focused on “ethnicity”, aiming to build a richly layered new cultural identity within the diverse Taiwanese society.
Though the Hakka are Taiwan's second-largest ethnic group, their identity is often reserved, with communities on the fringes. Geographically, culturally, and economically, Hakka is not mainstream. The 2023 Romantic Route 3 Arts Festival, spanning 65 days, 5 counties, 17 towns, and 150 kilometers, centers on Hakka culture and people. It continues the momentum from 2019, driving a Hakka cultural renaissance, fostering local confidence, encouraging youth to return, and revitalizing local industries.
✸Strategic Positioning✸
Anchoring the art festival: shaping a new perspective for looking.
Establish multi-channel communication with the public through language, visual branding, art, design, and food culture, bringing a renewed understanding of Hakka culture.
✸Curatorial Theme: Falabidbog✸
"Falabidbog" is a well-known phrase in the Hakka language. Traditionally, older generations of Hakka people used "Falabidbog" to criticize women who dressed beautifully and attractively, reflecting the lack of respect for women in the past traditional society.
This year, we have taken the vibrant and colorful connotations of "Falabidbog" as our theme, aiming to subvert the typical Hakka image of stoic, resilient, reserved, and diligent. "Falabidbog" infuses the entire festival with an upward momentum that reinterprets the contemporary Hakka identity. Additionally, the rhythmic syllables of "Falabidbog," as a subcultural phrase, are intended to spark public curiosity and exploration of Hakka culture.
✸Three Main Curatorial Axes: ART, DESIGN, FOOD CULTURE✸
Over a hundred professionals were invited to engage directly with the Hakka living spaces, co-creating with local residents. Through diverse perspectives, they have stimulated and transformed these places, fostering cultural confidence and revitalizing small towns.
—Art: Distilling the Essence of Small Towns
—Design: Transforming Everyday Beauty
—Food Culture: A New Revolution in Traditional Flavors
✸Achievements✸
Turning Romantic Route 3 from a road for leaving into one for homecoming.
—55 groups of artists and 21 design teams creating 91 pieces of work
—Over 100 cultural exploration activities
—More than 200 volunteers involved
—Total attendance in excess of 1.5 million