From a Drugs Village to a Cultural Village: The Role of a Batik Group

 

By : OCTAVIANI PUTRI & USRIAL

Experienced ridicule from batik activists causes anxiety and sadness. The negative image of the area has moved an artist to change it. A strategic location area geographically supports her desire. The development and arrangement of object tourism in the neighborhood of the batik activist invited many opportunities to empower the community, reach enhancement the economy, and improve the negative image that had polluted society.

 Batik activists became initiator batik groups in the area where they lived to prove that the village they lived in was not a Drug Village as most people call it. Instead, he wants to prove that his village is a hidden village with much meaning for life, history, culture, and knowledge that should be dug into and shown to society.

The batik activists became the initiator batik group. He attempted to dig for talents and potential in the community around him, starting by convincing and inviting society for help to realize his mission's vision. Persuasive communication is one of the strategies because applying it to the community should be smooth and motivated. The invitation doesn't force the people to follow the empowerment process carried out by the initiator batik group. So that hope could increase well-being and impact social, cultural, and economic aspects.

This article describes the struggle of a batik activist trying to encourage the economy and a positive image for his village. However, opportunities and challenges realized can't be avoided and resolved so fast, so it demands the right strategy to complete problems in the middle of society.

Batik and Community Participation: Changing the Negative Image of the Drug Village

Controlling his business to change the image area, a familiar batik initiator called Datuk (as for the elderly or a figure ) invites people around to join the batik group he made. With all his experience and skills in the world of batik, he gets belief in batik. Being of becoming a Batik activist, Datuk often goes and leaves home to the forest to search and experiment to look for batik materials from nature. Datuk is often called a person with a psychological problem because the weirdness gathers leaves, twigs, bark fruit, and others. After a good process and a long time, he finally, Datuk got the results he had expected. During s to the image of the village.

Find materials batik from nature. Until now, he still uses it. And he hopes to keep going to work without damaging the environment or being environmentally friendly. Finding batik materials from nature makes him more familiar, he produces many creations in the form of batik motifs, and he also got some awards for it. In fact, through the product of his batik, he could see President  Jokowi.

This strengthens him to invite people to realize his vision and mission of changing the image of his village and improving the economy. Attached is a village with a negative label, demanding various efforts to repair supported by the community. Because of that, he started approaching and giving empowerment to society slowly.

The steps of empowering so that he doe are using persuasive communication. In communication, persuasive Datuk aid as a persuader, and society becomes Datuk's target he persuades. Datuk did empowerment steps:

first, holding some activities to give awareness wbe ill importance everyone as individuals and members of society. In empowering society-based persuasive communication, he communicates directly to the neighborhood. He invites some people to folloactivitytivity held, such as training, batik and asks society to see various potentials and opportunities.

Second, Datuk shows the problems and reasons for stage training to society. He gives society information about various village problems: economic, educational, and social problems. The stigma of outside society n about image negative the area. So Datuk feels the need to empower society.

Third,  in solving the problem, see and observe the issues and opportunities. So, Datuk invites the society to cooperate in increasing the economy and changing the  image of his village with various activities held, such as batik training

Fourth, showing the importance of change, advances in science and technology make the level of competition increasingly fierce. If this progress is not accompanied by a determination to make changes, the community will remain left behind and powerless. In addition, of course, it will harm social life in general, such as education getting left behind, the crime rate increasing again, and the negative image of the village will remain strong.

Fifth, conduct testing and demonstrations. This stage is the implementation stage of the plans that have been prepared. In this stage, Datuk tries to foster and educate people to make batik. A series of other innovative activities were also carried out, such as; weaving, touching, trapping, and others.

Sixth, producing and publishing information and carrying out the previous stages until the community stops producing. Not only producing, but also how market the product, each product is distributed via Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp. So all activities from production to marketing are well recorded on various social media. The goal is to attract the outside community so that one of the messages Datuk wants to aspire to can be achieved.

Finally, carrying out capacity building, after going through various stages, where at this stage the empowered community already has the stock or capital in the form of skills, Datuk gives his authority to the community to develop the potential that has been educated and trained so far.

Challenges and Opportunities in Creating a Cultural Village

Carrying out a vision and mission, of course, there will be challenges and opportunities that will decorate the process, as well as the process of community empowerment based on persuasive communication carried out by Datuk as a batik activist who is also the initiator of the batik group. The challenges faced and experienced include communication distortions, lack of financing capital, there are still individuals who oppose varying levels of education, and the emergence of the covid-19 pandemic. But on the other hand, the opportunities that support realizing these goals include strategic locations, community enthusiasm, government support, relationships, and consumers, which are continually increasing.

The expression "effort does not betray the results" is evidenced by all the efforts that batik activists have made. The impact of the existence of community empowerment based on persuasive communication is the increase in the village's creative economy, the image of the area begins to improve, becomes the supporter of tourism that is being built, and success in realizing independence in the community. Community empowerment based on persuasive communication with various techniques and stages that Datuk has done can affect the desired achievement. The principles of community empowerment that exist in every individual who performs community empowerment will achieve capacity building and individual independence.