In an all-out effort to elevate the "Shanghai Culture" brand and deepen the construction of a socialist international cultural metropolis, the compilation of achievements from the three-year action plan, titled "Innovative Cases in the Work of Promoting the Shanghai Culture Brand," has been published recently by the Shanghai Culture Publishing House. This book had Hu Jinyun, the then executive deputy director-general of the Publicity Department of the CPC Shanghai Municipal Committee and current vice president of China Media Group, and Wang Yayuan, the deputy director-general of the Publicity Department of the CPC Shanghai Municipal Committee and deputy director-general of the Shanghai State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, as the editors-in-chief, selecting a total of 120 cases. Among them, the "Hundred-Thousand-Ten Thousand Character Play" Scriptwriting Workshop, jointly recommended by the Department of Sport, Health, Arts and Science of the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission and the Scriptwriting Research Center of the Shanghai Theatre Academy, was successfully included.
To implement the decisions and arrangements of the CPC Shanghai Municipal Committee and the Shanghai Municipal Government to vigorously promote four major brands, the Publicity Department of the CPC Shanghai Municipal Committee has specifically established a leadership group to advance the Shanghai Culture brand. By enhancing urban collaboration, district-level coordination and inter-district integration, a number of achievements in the integrated development of culture with education, science and technology, finance, trade, tourism, and sports have been cultivated. The selection activity invited authoritative experts from the domestic cultural brand field to form an expert group, which selected cases based on criteria of correct orientation, rich connotation, distinctive features, innovative mechanisms and far-reaching impact, using big data as the means to make a multi-level selection. The chosen cases are all typical, demonstrative and leading, providing important reference value for promoting the work of building up the "Shanghai Culture" brand.
As one of the three selected projects of the special action for the integration of cultural and educational enhancement in Shanghai, the innovative case of the "Hundred-Thousand-Ten Thousand Character Play" Scriptwriting Workshop includes four components: brand introduction, innovative work methods, brand impact and future prospects, with the recommendation text written by Cao Lingjuan, chief reporter of the People's Daily Shanghai Branch.
Jiang Huili, a member of the National Cultural and Tourism Public Services Expert Committee, former party group secretary and executive vice-chairman of the Shaanxi Writers Association, former deputy director-general of the Shaanxi Provincial Department of Culture, and former counselor of the Shaanxi Provincial Government, commented on the workshop, stating: "Practice has proven that this is an innovative type of scriptwriting pedagogy that rapidly enhances the scriptwriting capabilities of students. The highlight of the case is the concentration and refinement of core courses from the four-year undergraduate and three-year MFA programs in scriptwriting, enabling students to make significant gains within a short period of time. This case's innovation lies in its exploration of creative patterns and the pioneering spirit of teaching reform, which is demonstrative for effectively nurturing scriptwriting talents and motivating teachers to study teaching methods and improve their teaching quality. Increased publicity and promotion is recommended."
The "Hundred-Thousand-Ten Thousand Character Play" Scriptwriting Workshop was founded in 2015 by Professor Lu Jun, a research fellow at the Shanghai Municipal Institute of History and Literature, president of the Shanghai Chinese Opera Association, a distinguished teacher under the national "WR Plan", and chairman of the Academic Committee of the Shanghai Theatre Academy. In addition to being promoted across universities and cultural and artistic institutions nationwide, the workshop has also organized training courses for primary, secondary and high schools in Shanghai for nine consecutive years, having cultivated a group of young playwrights and incubated a series of excellent works. It has been honored with more than ten educational and teaching awards and project grants, including the National Arts Fund’s Grant for Arts Talent Training and the National MFA Students Online Demonstration Course. The workshop's supporting course "Introduction to Playwriting" was acknowledged as one of the National-level First-class Undergraduate Courses (2020), and the accompanying textbook "Playwriting Theory and Techniques" was named as one of the first batch of Premium Higher Education Textbooks in Shanghai (2021), with author Professor Lu Jun receiving the inaugural National Advanced Individual in Textbook Development (2021). In 2023, the faculty team for Chinese Playwriting Studies from the Shanghai Theatre Academy, headed by Professor Lu Jun and with the core members from the faculty team of this workshop, was approved for the third batch of "Huang Danian-Style Faculty Teams in Universities Nationwide".
