Youth Creativity: Participation in City Identity Building in Surakarta

Surakarta has a long history as an ’old city’ which is built in a kingdom concept, including its political considerations, sociology strategies, economics, and culture orientation. All of the cultural products which are born and developed in Surakarta reflects the civilization level and ideology maturity of the society’s cultural journey. This research is aimed at identifying the information and creative ideas which put forward historical aspect and traditional culture as a strategic basis, so that a new comprehensive study on the youth involvement in supporting the identity and cultural city image building will be found. The object of this research were creativity, art, and traditional culture. Meanwhile, the subject of this research were the youth/youngsters at Sangkrah and Joyoraharjan, Surakarta. The method used was under the Research and Development (R&D) approach in the following steps: 1) initial research and collecting information, 2) planning, 3) preliminary development of product. The data were collected using in-depth interviews, participant observations, document analysis, and focus group discussion. The results show that the potentials which can be developed are the physical room, art, skill, and literacy. This research produces a developmental model draft.