Political Fuss? Sorry, Young Creators are Busy Working
With enthusiasm and inspiration from their surroundings, they can process coffee, write local stories, create crafts and even conduct plastic waste cleaning campaigns with an economic value. Their influence can be felt globally.
If selected by the Academy Awards in the United States next year, they could win an Oscar for a Javanese language film that uses the Tegal dialect.
A young man wearing a hat, a T-shirt, a casual blazer and rolled sleeves, walked forward. Quite relaxed and casual, there was no impression of elegance at all. A moment later, he explained his success in opening four coffee shops that are quite popular on social media, selling at least 1,000 cups of coffee a day. Jakarta residents may have tasted his coffee, called Tuku coffee.
Andanu Prasetyo, 28, the founder of Tuku, was among the speakers at Ideafest 2017 on Thursday, where he presented the success story of his business. Andanu’s success cannot be separated from his hobby to treat his neighbors in Cipete, Jakarta, with his specially blended coffee, which was later quite favored.
"Some say coffee should be drunk without sugar; that is should be made like this or like that. Well, I want to make coffee favored by the people,” he said.
With input from his neighbors, the coffee lovers of Cipete, he then made Es Kopi Susu Tetangga (Iced Milk Coffee of the Neighbors).
“My neighbors liked the coffee, which was mixed with condensed milk and sugar," said Andanu, who started his coffee business when he was still in university.
However, the milked coffee was not only popular among Andanu’s neighbors. With the power of social media and collaborations with online app providers, his business flourished. His small coffee shop attracted many people who were willing to stand in line for a cup of coffee they had ordered through an only app.
Andanu takes advantage of the power of collaboration.
"Now, we provide a drink, a waiting area and convenient parking space. We have two new coffee shops devoted to orders made through the online application," he said.
Support from neighbors
The courage to start something familiar, local and with the spirit to collaborate has fueled the creative industry. Information technology does not only provide connectivity, but also exposes its users to the world. Uniqueness is now becoming mandatory.
Wicaksono Wisnu Nugroho, the director of a film called Turah, confidently made the movie about his neighbor in Tegal, Central Java. Amid the invasion of foreign-language Hollywood movies, he created a movie using the popular Tegal dialect. Turah depicts the poverty of Kampung Tirang and is played by local actors and actress. Wicaksono collaborated with the local theaters for the film, so most of the players are members of theaters in Tegal. This should be good news.
Turah was selected to represent Indonesia in the Academy Awards 2018, when it will compete in the Best Foreign Language Film category.
What about the movie’s box office achievement? Turah has reached the break-even point even prior to being screened at local movie theaters. Its marketing strategy was to take advantage of alternative viewing spaces, such as on university campuses or in independent movie theaters. "Entering the big movie theaters is just a bonus, a kind of requirement," Wicaksono said.
The film Uang Panai (Hot Money) saw even greater success. Raising awareness about the tradition of wedding dowries in Makassar, the film has successfully drawn 500,000 viewers to movie theaters across the country.
Uang Panai has so far earned Rp 7.5 billion (US$554,939) at the box office, against a total production cost of only Rp 500 million.
"Why are the stories of Indonesian movies almost the same, about metropolitan lifestyles with settings abroad, when Indonesia is rich with interesting stories," said Uang Panai director Amril Nuryan.
The bamboo-inspired Byo Living products are successfully exhibited in Paris at Maison & Objet, a prestigious international exhibition for lifestyle products. The weaving technique it uses has been part of Indonesian tradition for hundreds of years. Byo Living products are also made from plastic waste or from plastic that can be recycled.
Meanwhile, Bayu Eko Moektito, also known as Bayu Skak, 23, from Malang, East Java, consistently creates comedies in the Javanese language.
"Initially, the content was made to be watched by my friends who speak Javanese," he said.
Now, his hilarious sketches attract audiences from all over the country, as well as Javanese communities in Suriname. His YouTube channel has 1.2 million subscribers and has even inspired the formation of a fan community called Skak Mate in several cities.
Bayu also collaborates with other YouTubers. "With collaborations, the number of our viewers increases," he said, explaining that his fans would visit his collaborators’ channels and vice versa.
The power to collaborate with dozens of organizations, schools and stores has also enabled Isabel Wijsen, 13, and her older sister, Melati, 15, co-founders of Bye Bye Plastic Bag, to successfully launch a beach cleaning campaign and prevent the use of plastic.
From a beach in Bali, Isabel spread her ideas to the world as a speaker at the United Nations and prestigious TED forum. The movement has gone global and successfully cleaned 427 beaches around the world.
Hunting for ideas
During Ideafest 2017: Festival of Collaboration, which was held at the Jakarta Convention Center on Oct. 5-6, the above creators and others like them shared their ideas with visitors through 80 sessions conducted by 180 speakers in 10 rooms (which were named after the world\'s creative entrepreneurs such as Steve Jobs, Andy Warhol and Mark Zuckerberg). Most audience members were millennials thirsty for new ideas, open to inspiration in an ever-changing digital age and willing to spend money for the two-day event.
Even institutions and businesses sent their employees to the event to gain insight. Muhajjir Esyaputra, 29, a digital strategist working for a digital marketing company, attended talks on how to communicate with millennials, the soccer industry and marketing.
"I can build a network through this event and compare what has been done in the office with their successful experiences. For me, this is the driving force to do something," he said.
The co-chairman of Ideafest 2017, Andi Sadha, said that collaboration has become an absolute necessity in the creative economy. This event is expected to bring together young people with experts in their fields.
The creative industry, according to the deputy head of the Creative Economy Agency, Ricky Pesik, is about creating added value, and if achieved, it can take advantage of global market opportunities.
The creative economy in 2016 contributed Rp 852 trillion to Indonesia’s gross domestic product (GDP) and employed about 15.4 million workers. The workers are mostly under 40 years old.
"We want to nurture more creators so that our country won’t just be a market," Ricky said.
For Ve Handojo, founder of the ABCD School of Coffee, creators need collaborations to create a new point of view, to prevent from being boring and abandoned. "At the coffee shop, it is fun to meet people from all sorts of areas who drink coffee while brainstorming and making new projects with a positive energy," he explained.
Well, maybe politicians also need the spirit of creating positive collaborations for the people, so that politics would not get boring.