A project to create a “handmade town” in a temporary housing area. A colorful handmade mat was made in a meeting place of the temporary housing area in Fukushima after the Great East Japan earthquake. Residents then joined, and started to talk about a town they wanted to build.On the completed mat, participants added and displayed temporarily their own “parts of the town”. The added parts became like a market.
This “handmade town” project was regularly held as one-day workshop events, in which various images of “town” were presented in the temporary housing area. These included: a movie theater, library, bus stop, café, supermarket, city hall, museum, concert hall, bath house, planetarium, TV station etc.
Fukushima residents were forced to reconstruct their hometown after the earthquake. By fostering “My Town market”, it is the project’s hope that this will be a positive tool for residents to think about and create their own town in the future.