The "I Love You China" Tide of Caolu AI Arts Gala was held today at the Jinhai Culture and Arts Center in Pudong New Area. It was a digital arts celebration entirely created by local residents and fully empowered by AI, showcasing the AI creative achievements of Caolu Township residents, especially its silver-haired seniors, and vividly illustrating the new value of ordinary people in the new era embracing digital technology, deepening artistic creation, and empowering grassroots society.
At the beginning of this year, the Jinhai Culture and Arts Center took the lead in launching a civic AI literacy training program, breaking down the entrenched barriers that "AI belongs to the young and art belongs to professionals" and offering regular, inclusive AI skills training to community residents, cultural teams, and silver-haired seniors across the township. After three months of systematic study and hands-on practice, many ordinary residents and retired seniors with zero prior experience successfully crossed the digital divide and mastered a range of skills including AI lyric writing, poetry composition, short skit creation, painting and stage set design, and creative stage planning. A group of artistic backbone members and active AI creators rooted in the community, passionate about creation, and brave in innovation emerged.
All performers and creators in this gala are ordinary residents of Caolu Township, serving as a true reflection of the improved digital artistic literacy of grassroots people. From tentative first encounters with artificial intelligence to skilled independent creation of artistic works using AI tools, this National Day AI Arts Gala is a concentrated showcase of the Jinhai Culture and Arts Center's civic AI teaching achievements. Trainees drew on the real scenes of Caolu Township, combined their own life experiences and reflections on the times, and used various AI large models to polish program scripts, compose melodies, and optimize stage presentation.
Every program stays close to people's daily lives and is filled with local sentiment, expressing attachment and love for their hometown Caolu while also praising the motherland's prosperity and celebrating Pudong's forging ahead in the new era. The sincere and heartfelt performances struck a chord with the audience and won rounds of enthusiastic applause.
No one had expected that grassroots artistic works created by formerly zero-experience ordinary people together with AI technology could be so vivid, moving, and memorable. Against the backdrop of improving digital literacy for all, actively advancing aging, and the flourishing development of new mass arts, grassroots people represented by silver-haired seniors taking the initiative to learn AI and use it for artistic creation carries profound contemporary value and practical significance.
For individuals, AI artistic creation, in a lightweight and inclusive form, builds a new platform for lifelong learning and self-empowerment for older groups. For society, this practice thoroughly breaks the dual barriers of age and technology, bridges the digital creative divide for older adults, and enables ordinary people to become not passive recipients of digital civilization but creators of public culture, disseminators of grassroots civilization, and participants in social governance, conveying positive values through original artistic works, telling grassroots stories well, and empowering community development.
At the same time, this innovative exploration provides a replicable and promotable Jinhai model for grassroots public cultural development, the implementation of digital inclusion, and the improvement of civic spiritual civilization in the new era. The Jinhai Culture and Arts Center has cultivated its work for ten years and continued to innovate. This National Day AI Arts Gala is a new leap following the tenth-anniversary AI Arts Gala, marking that grassroots public culture has officially entered a new AI era in which everyone can participate, everyone can create, and everyone can shine.
Zhou Jianyi, director of the Jinhai Culture and Arts Center, said: "Watching the wonderful performances by community residents and cultural teams on stage, I am deeply moved. In just a few months of general AI literacy training, ordinary people and silver-haired seniors have deeply integrated with cutting-edge AI technology and produced such wonderful, warm, and powerful artistic energy. This was something we had not anticipated at the beginning, and it has strengthened our original aspiration to deepen digitally inclusive arts and empower everyone to shine."
Technology empowers culture, and art illuminates people's livelihoods. With its cultural original aspiration, the Jinhai Culture and Arts Center has deepened digital benefits for the people, opened up the "last mile" of digital aesthetic education for all and inclusive mass arts, allowing the fruits of digital civilization to reach all age groups and benefit ordinary people, so that every resident can shine on the stage of the new era.