MYPAT was performing (photo provided by MYPAT, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.5 China Mainland license.)

Recommended by Professor WEN Tiejun and Professor Jing WANG, consultants of Advisory Board of Creative Commons China Mainland, WANG Chunyan, Project lead of the CC China Mainland, together with other project team memebers, SHI Song, ZHENG Yi and XU Jianping, made a visit to the Migrant Youth Performing Art Troupe(MYPAT) at Tsinghua University on the evening of July 8th, 2007. MYPAT was giving a performance there at the invitation of the Organizing Committee of the conference on “Social Integration and Employment of Rural Migrant Workers from the Perspective of Partnership between the Government, Enterprises and Civil Society”.

Before the performance, WANG and SUN Heng, head of the troupe, had in-depth exchanges. WANG gave SUN a brief introduction of CC project, including its background, nature and purpose, the development of CC on the China Mainland and the CC licenses. The troupe head showed great interests in CC project and the approach of CC licenses. SUN said that as artistic creators, they want to share their creation with others but infringement and pirate are constant headaches and concerns, therefore they have been looking for a proper way to disseminate their works, in which the creators must be respected first, and their works can be disseminated for public welfare. SUN was glad to see that the idea and approach of CC licenses coincide with what the troupe expects. SUN was also pleased to see that CC China Mainland recorded their performance and will release it under a local CC license. SUN also expressed his interests in further cooperation with CC China Mainland and in adopting CC licenses to the website and related contents of MYPAT.

The performance was presented by SUN Heng, DUAN Yu, XU Duo and JIANG Guoliang from MYPAT jointly with the kids from Tongxin Youth Art Troupe. The audience enjoyed twelve original songs, all of which were recorded and would be presented on CC China Mainland official website under a local CC license.

About MYPAT

MYPAT is a non-profit folk art troupe established by several rural migrant workers, to provide cultural and artistic performance for rural migrant workers. Most of the members are workers from other provinces in China, each of whom is good at a certain artistic field. They give performances and held activities to promote rights and interests of migrant workers in their spare time. Since the troupe was founded on May 1st, 2002, it has insisted on its idea “to speak with songs, to safeguard rights through art”. They have released two albums “Workers are in the same family” and “Singing for the labor” respectively on September 10th, 2004 and May 1st, 2007, covering 24 selected excellent works within these five years. Taking ballad and rock as their form, the songs are full of feelings, which frankly speak out the true voices of the workers on a strange land in Peking. Each of the songs is drawn from an unforgettable experience of the workers, and expresses their bitterness in daily life.