Text and photo: Tri Damayantho
Translated by: Beta Divotya Adiwidjaja
Cimahi – The modern architecture building looked empty, the large amount of motorcycles and a few cars parked on a small asphalt yard felt so different with the buildings front door surroundings. The entrance door looked hidden, there is no security guard or receptionist visible like big buildings in Jakarta. If a person came here for the first time, certainly he/she will turn back and go away.
The new and modern building is called Baros Information Technology Creative (BITC), officially opened at December 27, 2011 by the Minister of Communication and Information Tifatul Sembiring. From the ground floor to the third floor is empty, but on the fourth floor there is a community that is struggling in this army town, called Cimahi Creative Association. Cimahi Creative Association (CCA) is an association of creative industry doers in Cimahi and its management was inaugurated by the mayor of Cimahi, Ir. H. M. Itoc Tochija, MM., on October 28, 2009. At this moment CCA is being led by Rudy Suteja that is also president and director of Baros Creative Partner.
BITC is city of Cimahi icon, which is Cimahi government’s concept to make Baros a center of creative activity on a national and international scale. This building that was planned to be facilitated with public service room has begun organizing event since early 2011. Events were carried out in cooperation with several other institutions either from government or private institutions. One of the events is “Technopreneur Camp” that was carried out last July to commemorate 10th anniversary of the city of Cimahi. On this event CCA is working together with BPPT organizing an event that have a theme: “Growing a new business based on creative technology”. The event’s purpose is to follow-up creativity products based on creative technology from innovators, inventors or creators in Cimahi in order to commercialize their products.
During this fasting month, CCA is not stopping its activities, like CCA president Rudy Suteja said, there are 3 programs that are currently running. On the beginning of the fasting month, they organized a batik workshop, where the participants, which are high school students and teenagers, were given the knowledge about batik technique and history.
“Although the city of Cimahi have a potential in the field of animation and telemathics, we are not forgetting other creative industry subsector, like handicraft, considering Indonesia will be the host for batik and batik itself has become a world heritage, and this workshop is an initiative respond from CCA” said Rudy Suteja when met at BITC, Cimahi.
This week, Badan Penanaman Modal Kota Cimahi (City of Cimahi Investment Capital Committee) and Cimahi Creative Association are organizing “Augmented Reality” training. Other than that, they will also organizing “Healthy Internet” training for internet café managers or owners. This activity that is supported by the Ministry of Youth and Sports is free, but has limited seats, considering the limited amount of facilities.
Other than organizing and doing other activities, the ability of this young CCA kids can not be taken lightly. With a good technical ability and applicability they are already involved with big projects, like becoming an animator. There are over than a 1000 creative industry doers that are provided by CCA and 400 of them are very potential, with abilities to compete globally.
“There are many CCA alumnus that are being “hijacked” by companies from outside of Cimahi, of course this will made things difficult for CCA to produce and develops animation movie concept autonomously.
When asked what is causing CCA to expand so fast, Rudy Suteja explained that the support from local government is very important. Maybe city of Cimahi is the only city that is providing special building facility for creative industry, and the building is a real proof where facilities that is provided by government can encourage and accelerate growth of creative industry.
Since 2009, the local government of Cimahi has already realized that. In the beginning, Cimahi, also known as Army City (because there are a lot of military/army academies in the city) is a part of Bandung regency, and then in 1976 it is decided to become an administrative city, having 3 sub districts and 15 political districts. Then in 2001 Cimahi city becomes an autonomous city, this status change forms a main value for a city that have more than 400.000 citizens to discover their city potential especially their human resources.
