From collaborative creation to finished exhibition
The Damyang-gun Cultural Foundation will hold the 2026 Damyang Bamboo Hideout Festival — themed "Special Imagination, Bamboo Hideout" — Saturday and Sunday at Dambit Music Hall, located at 69 Gwanbangjerimgil in Damyang-eup.
The festival is a family co-creation arts event in which children, families, artists and bamboo masters work together to build 20 bamboo hideouts. Children's drawings will be brought to life as real structures, and the finished works will be presented as an exhibition, offering participants a distinctive cultural and artistic experience.
The defining feature of this year's festival is that children are not merely activity participants — they are the creative force behind the entire project. Taking "dream hideout" as their theme, the children channeled their imaginations and stories into drawings, from secret personal spaces to cozy retreats they would like to share with their families. Those individual ideas became the starting point for the festival.
The festival also shines a light on bamboo — one of Damyang's signature ecological resources — from a fresh perspective. Thinned bamboo in particular is used as a material for artistic creation, demonstrating the versatility and artistic potential of local natural resources. As children and families handle and work with bamboo directly, they will combine the ecological material with creative imagination to discover new cultural value and experience Damyang's nature and culture in a rich, varied way.
The visions of 20 families, realized as 20 bamboo hideouts, will greet visitors through an exhibition titled "Special Imagination, All the Way (Bamboo)." Visitors will encounter the diverse appeal of bamboo spaces reinterpreted through children's eyes, along with the unique stories crafted together by families, artists and masters.
sij@heraldcorp.com
