Organized by Wolgok Youth Center, the festival was planned and run entirely by youth over seven months — 85 participants across 16 teams, including 11 bands and five dance crews, took the stage.
The Wolgok Youth Center in Seoul's Seongbuk-gu held the youth culture and arts festival "UR Festival: vol.2" on Saturday at Kkumbit Theater, drawing a full house.
"UR Festival" is the center's flagship cultural arts program, designed to give young people a stage to showcase their talents and share the experience with local residents.
This year's edition was particularly notable for the degree of youth ownership: members of the center's performance planning committee spent about seven months driving every aspect of the festival themselves — setting the concept, recruiting and auditioning acts, building the stage and preparing events — and stamping it with ideas that were entirely their own.
A total of 16 youth performance teams — 11 bands and five dance crews, 85 participants in all — took the stage, displaying the full range of their artistic abilities through varied music and performances. Professional guidance and advance coordination from the Seoul Metropolitan Youth Music Center and Mad Dance Academy helped raise the overall polish of the show.
Every one of the 320 seats at Kkumbit Theater sold out on the day, and the children, teenagers, families and neighbors who filled the hall cheered the young cast on with sustained applause, completing what organizers called a festival of community.
Seongbuk-gu District Mayor Lee Seung-ro said it was especially meaningful that so many residents had come out to support a stage that the young people had spent so long preparing on their own. "We will continue to expand opportunities so that young people — the leaders of tomorrow — can freely express their talents and passions and grow into the driving force of culture and the arts," he said.
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