“My graduation project plans to design a board game product, which integrates the health culture of Hutou Village, fun, easy to remember and easy to spread.” On the morning of February 27, the joint action of graduation design on art-driven rural revitalization by some colleges and universities in the Yangtze River Delta area kicked off in Hutou Village, Chalu Town of Ninghai County. Li Ruhan, a senior majoring in visual communication design from Donghua University, stood in front of the cultural auditorium of Hutou Village, made the opening report of his graduation project.

To Li Ruhan’s excitement, Hutou Village is full of expectations for her design and is prepared to make the products the leading cultural creative products of the village. “It is beyond my wildest dream that my graduation project can be directly used in the rural land. It gives me a greater sense of achievement than designing out of thin air!”

On February 27, college student representatives from 12 art and design colleges in the Yangtze River Delta area launched the initiative of “making my contributions to the countryside” to promote the revitalization of the countryside with the power of youth. 60 graduation designs will be “painted” on the land of Hutou Village. In order to make the graduation designs more in line with the needs of the countryside, 12 colleges and universities have also creatively hired local villagers as graduation project tutors to make art closer to the countryside and villagers and better serve the revitalization of the countryside.

In recent years, Ninghai County has continued to explore the talent model of art-driven revitalization of the countryside and strengthen the talent support of rural revitalization. This event is a joint action of graduation design of colleges and universities in the art-driven rural revitalization in the Yangtze River Delta area. The teacher-student teams of 12 colleges and universities in the Yangtze River Delta area practiced the local training mode of “college team + foreign teachers and students + villager tutors”, which locally integrates and transforms the whole process of graduation thesis writing, graduation achievement exhibition, graduation defense and achievement landing, exhibiting the design works in the field and holding the graduation defense in the countryside. “In the future, the whole countryside of Ninghai County will be built into an open and shared rural design practice base to let young people come in and let the village go out.” said an official from Ninghai County.

“With the focus on the countryside this time, I think the possibility of landing the designed products should be considered from the living needs of villagers.” Zheng Yuxin, a student majoring in environmental design at Zhejiang University of Technology, selected the topic of landscape design for the “herbal garden” in the village. The purpose is to promote traditional Chinese medicine culture and integrate the Chinese medicine and landscape design into the graduation design in combination with the current popular healing landscape. “Villager tutors don’t rate your professional ability. The products we design should make them feel that they can really realize it and promote the development of the village.”

The proposal of college students doing graduation design in the countryside has also attracted the attention of foreign students. Yesterday, several foreign teachers and students, including Jan Jozwik, assistant professor of the Department of Economics of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Nottingham, Ningbo, looked for design “topics” in Hutou Village. They fell in love with several old houses in the village and wanted to bring foreign students to the village for design and contribute to the rural revitalization of China.