PUTUO District has made further efforts to promote exhibitions and lectures in communities to meet the growing demands of residents.

The Putuo District Culture Center organized public cultural activities in various communities across the district since March 2015.

The network considered the demands of all groups of people in organizing the events.

A lawyer, Lu Jian, told reporters that she had not joined any cultural activities but after the community events she started to enjoy them near her place in Changzheng Town.

Suzhou Creek-themed gala

The district’s culture center focused on promoting Suzhou Creek-themed gala activities and award-winning performances by Changshou Community performers at the National Galaxy Award in Putuo District.

“We felt cultural intimacy with some of the Putuo District programs,” one of the audiences said after watching a performance.

The culture center also introduced schools in the districts to the Suzhou Creek Brands and Intangible Cultural Heritage and organized tours to the cultural venues such as museums along the creek.

A total of 72 performances, 64 lectures and 42 exhibitions have been conducted in 2015. A total of 373 community cultural directors have been dispatched by the district to the communities in 2015.

The center also screened 1,153 films and donated 3,300 charity tickets. It helped to set up 20 free reading rooms at 18 neighborhood committee cultural activity centers, the district’s disabled federation activity center and Zoo Coffee on Meichuan Road.

The district also collected feedbacks on cultural demands from residents to guarantee quality.

After each event, feedbacks from residents are collected by district cultural inspectors. Community workers also carry out surveys ahead of next big cultural activity.

Putuo has also been connected to Shanghai’s culture cloud-computing database and helped all its community cultural activity centers to open official WeChat accounts to help residents book tickets online.

Cloud-computing database

The bidding process for cultural activity attracted more than 30 performance companies by February this year, compared with 10-plus of last year.

The center’s employees organize inspection on cultural events on details such as attendance, performance quality, and conduct surveys to collect opinions. Putuo also attracted volunteers to help out with inspections and recruited young professionals in cultural departments and set up a system to train them.

Putuo now has more than 30,000 public cultural activities in a year with total participation by residents numbering to 2.6 million.