Our Mission
The mission of ChinaVine is to educate English-speaking / reading children, youth, and adults about the cultural heritage of China.
How do we achieve our mission?
This mission is primarily achieved through and interactive website, ChinaVine.org, along with various web 2.0 portals such as Facebook, Vimeo, Twitter, SoundCloud, and Flickr.
What is the source of our name?
The name “ChinaVine” is based on a previous web based partnership project that documented Florida folk artists called Folkvine. The term “vine” was chosen because it represents culture as fluid and changing. It grows in winding ways and never stays the same.
What motivated the creation of ChinaVine?
ChinaVine first emerged as a partnership between scholars associated with the Center for Community Arts and Cultural Policy (CCACP) at the University of Oregon, the Cultural Heritage Alliance (CHA) at the University of Central Florida, and the Folk Art Research Institute at Shandong University of Art and Design in Jinan, China in 2006. Since then scholars from the Folklore Program at Beijing Normal University; the Beijing Folk Literature and Art Association; The Art Education Department at the Ohio State University, the University of Main, and Southwest University for Nationalities in Chengdu, and Ms. Ke Jia, an independent scholar working within Miao villages in Guizhou have joined the project.
Who contributes to ChinaVine?
The scholars, graduate students and undergraduate students contributing to the project are associated with the fields of folklore, art, arts and humanities education, linguistics, and cultural policy, among others in the US and China. In part, ChinaVine is an outgrowth of The People’s Republic of China (PRC) ambitious initiative to identify, preserve, and sustain its cultural heritage. Integral to this project is introducing this heritage to an international audience.
What will be found on ChinaVine?
ChinaVine.org consists of volumes focusing on eleven villages in Shandong, seven folk artists in Beijing, and two Miao festivals and two Miao performance centers in four villages in Guizhou. In process is material associated with contemporary art and music in Beijng;, folk artists in Shanghai and Beijing; and the poetry of Aku Wu Wu in Sichuan province.
What questions are being considered by the scholars associated with ChinaVine?
How is ChinaVine.org contextualizing objects for the purpose of communicating their makers’ lives and the importance of the traditions represented by the objects? In what ways does ChinaVine.org facilitate a communicative relationship between the people who are being represented and the participants with the website?
How does ChinaVine.org cultivate a common purpose while acknowledging the differences among disciplinary approaches in the US and China? When disciplinary approaches collide, how are these collisions mediated, represented, and used for educational purpose?
How is ChinaVine.org contributing to critical debates over the roles to technology, education, and shifting paradigms of media by presenting the parallel yet intertwined exercises of cultural practice and humanities research as manifest in the digital domain?
What programming and design strategies have been used in this project to take advantage of the innovation that scholars and students bring to the project while simultaneously creating a management system that allows for ease of use, maintenance and sustainability?
ChinaVine.org is in its second iteration moving into a third that focuses on increased interactivity. How have the transitions between these iterations been managed? What is the process for futures planning for ChinaVine.org?