High Satisfaction with Nowon-gu Local Artists and Small Business Store Matching Project

'Artterior' Where Local Artists Uniquely Transform Small Business Stores... Matching 13 Young Artists with 36 Small Business Stores, High Satisfaction

[Asia Economy Reporter Jongil Park] Nowon-gu (Mayor Oh Seung-rok) announced that the ‘Our Neighborhood Artterior’ project, which matches local artists with small business stores to revitalize the stagnant alley commercial district, is receiving great response.

The ‘Our Neighborhood Artterior (Art+Interior)’ project is a program where local artists improve the interior and exterior design of stores operated by small business owners.

The main goal is to provide young artists, who lack opportunities for experience, with spaces to express their creativity and income support, while strengthening the local alley commercial district by improving store interiors that reflect the characteristics of small businesses.

From January to May this year, the district promoted the project targeting a total of 36 stores mainly in Gongneung-dong and Sanggye-dong. Priority was given to excellent small business owners who have maintained their presence for a long time, such as Baeknyeon Gaegae (Century-old stores) and Jangin Gaegae (Master stores).

The district visited the stores, explained the purpose of the project, and collected preliminary data on the business owners’ requests. Discussions focused on maximizing the synergy between the participating artists’ specialties and the characteristics of each store, with a total of 12 artists working on three stores each.

Reflecting the characteristics of each store such as restaurants, flower shops, beauty salons, and photo studios, tasks such as replacing display cases, changing interior films, and producing logos and signboards were carried out.

A previously unremarkable flower shop was decorated entirely with green leaves on its signboard to make it easily recognizable as a flower shop. A gimbap restaurant replaced its plain main signboard with a witty signboard reflecting its name and produced stickers and business cards using the design to promote to consumers.

The district secured a project budget of 151 million KRW this year, following last year. Based on the experience from the first half of the year, improvements such as eligibility criteria and standards were supplemented, and a detailed project plan will be prepared in July for full-scale implementation.

Mayor Oh Seung-rok said, “Since the store image can be improved without cost burden, the satisfaction of participating stores is high,” and added, “Through the Artterior project, we will support small business owners and local artists who are struggling due to COVID-19.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.