The Picnic - from Rejection to Opportunities

After 3 months of discovering Stars and sharing snippets of their lives in Jurong, Project Zero - Same Old Brand New Jurong had The Picnic last weekend! Think: people sitting on red-and-white picnic mats at Blk 319 with food under the 9AM morning sun, excited to exchange stories and have conversations. Except most were in the comforts of their homes, on their sofas or at their desks, armed with their breakfast in hand, and The Picnic’s specially curated playlist blasting through the Zoom meeting. It wasn’t a picnic in the conventional sense -- it was an e-picnic. 

A rare photo taken during The Picnic because we were so busy connecting to one another and figuring out what buttons to click on Zoom.

Thankfully, stories were still shared and conversations happened. At two separate picnic ‘mats’, the Stars contributed words that stood out to them during the sharing of stories and activities (check out some of the materials used below!), and questions they were interested to explore. Eventually, the question of How might we turn rejected ideas into opportunities in Jurong? brought it home with a nail-biting victory of 11-10. The Stars then brainstormed ideas to address the question and narrowed it to 2 ideas -- keep your eyes peeled as we explore and test them!

For the longest time, The Picnic was planned as a physical meet-up involving the Stars and others in the community. With the twist and turn of events (read: COVID-19), the idea of having a physical gathering became an idea that had to be rejected. Yet, the rejected idea was turned into opportunities -- to connect with strangers in the community through an online platform, and to come up with ways to create opportunities for other rejected ideas in Jurong. Perhaps, the Stars had partially answered the question with their spontaneity and patience with the changes to The Picnic -- a big thank you to everyone’s support till now!