ギルド名鑑 No.234 地域未来企画 代表理事・室田伸一さん

(The English version follows the Japanese text.)

港区を起点にいろんなところで働く・暮らす、楽しい時間を創りたい人たちによるコミュニティCreative Guild。このギルド名鑑では、そんなCreative Guildでつながったユニークな方々をご紹介しています。今回は、一般社団法人 地域未来企画の代表理事・室田伸一さん。港区観光協会をはじめ、地域の人々との関わりのなかで大切にしているのは、役割や肩書きを越えて「あなたと一緒に仕事がしたい」と思い、思われる関係づくり。一人ひとりの思いや得意を結び、地域の未来をともにつくる挑戦へとつなげています。

室田さんは1989年に大手旅行代理店へ入社。海外旅行や旅行ブランド、経営企画など、さまざまな仕事に携わってきました。地域との協働に手応えを感じたのは、鹿児島県長島町との出会いです。現地で味わったブリのおいしさをツアーにするなかで、地域の人と一緒だからこそ見つかる魅力や、できることの広がりを実感。2020年には一般社団法人 地域未来企画の代表理事に就任しました。現在は地域の魅力を生かした体験や交流の場づくりに取り組み、港区でも観光協会や文化の専門家、地域の事業者と連携。それぞれの得意を持ち寄り、講座や街歩き、文化イベントを形にしています。

そんな室田さんの基本スタンスは、フラットであること。それは、誰に対しても一人の人として向き合い、同じ実践者として語り、耳を傾け、互いの熱意を紡ぐことです。会社の肩書きや立場、目先の利益ではなく、「この人だから一緒にやりたい」と思える人とつながる。そして、自分もそう思われる人であり続ける。その思いを大切に、人と人が出会い、互いの思いや得意を持ち寄れる場を、「地域未来交流会」というかたちでも届けています。その場から自然と交流が生まれ、新しい未来をつくる具体的なアクションへと発展していく。一人ではできない挑戦を、人とのつながりから形にしていくところが、室田さんの大きな魅力なのです。

地域には、日々の暮らしのなかで育まれた魅力や、何かを始めたいという人の思いがあります。ただ、普段の仕事や付き合いの範囲だけでは、その存在に気づく機会は限られます。出会っても、会社名や肩書きの紹介だけで終われば、何に心を動かされ、どんな未来をつくりたいのかまでは伝わりません。さらに、すぐに役立つか、成果につながるかを先に問うほど、まだ形になっていない可能性は見過ごされがちです。互いの思いを知らないままでは、一緒にできることも見つけにくく、取り組みはそれぞれの手元にとどまります。人も知恵もある地域で、それらが出会い、共に動き出すきっかけをどう育てるかが問われています。

室田さんは、地域で出会った人の知恵や熱意に触れながら、それぞれの力が生きる企画を仲間と形にしてきました。「いつか一緒にやりましょう」が実際の取り組みになった経験には、普段から相手を知り、学び合ってきた時間が息づいています。「あなたと仕事がしたい」という気持ちは、同時に、自分は相手と何ができるだろうと考える入口にもなるのですね。だからこそ、身近な誰かの話を聞き、面白いと感じたことを持ち寄ってみる。そこから生まれる小さな実践が、新たな出会いや次の挑戦につながっていく。室田さんが紡ぐように、私たちも地域の未来を誰かに任せるのではなく、自分たちも一緒につくっていく楽しさを大事にしていきたいですね。

“I Want to Work with You” Brings People Together.
Shinichi Murota, Representative Director of Chiiki-Mirai-Kikaku, on Nurturing Encounters into Collaboration

Back to the Japanese version.

Creative Guild is a community of people who live and work in different places, with Minato City as a starting point, and who want to create fun times together. In this Guild Directory, we introduce some of the unique people we have met through Creative Guild. This time, we meet Shinichi Murota, Representative Director of the general incorporated association Chiiki-Mirai-Kikaku. Through his involvement with the Minato City Tourism Association and people in local communities, he values relationships that go beyond roles and titles: wanting to work with someone, and being someone they want to work with in return. By bringing together individual aspirations and strengths, he connects these relationships to shared efforts to shape the future of local communities.

He joined a major travel agency in 1989 and has worked across overseas travel, travel brands, corporate planning, and other fields. An encounter with Nagashima Town in Kagoshima Prefecture gave him a tangible sense of what collaboration with a community could achieve. While developing a tour around the delicious yellowtail he tasted there, he discovered attractions that emerge through working with local people, and how much more becomes possible together. In 2020, he became Representative Director of Chiiki-Mirai-Kikaku. Today, he helps create experiences and opportunities for exchange that draw on local attractions. In Minato City, too, he works with the tourism association, cultural specialists, and local businesses, bringing their strengths together to create lectures, walking tours, and cultural events.

His basic stance is to meet people as equals. That means approaching each person as an individual and a fellow practitioner, speaking openly, listening, and weaving their enthusiasm together. Rather than connecting through company titles, status, or immediate gain, he connects with people he wants to work with because of who they are. And he strives to remain someone others feel the same way about. With that intention, he continues to create places where people can meet and contribute their aspirations and strengths, including the gatherings called Chiiki-Mirai Gathering. Exchanges arise naturally in these spaces and develop into concrete action to create a new future. His ability to turn relationships into challenges that no one could take on alone is a large part of his appeal.

Local communities hold attractions nurtured through everyday life, along with the aspirations of people who want to start something. Yet the boundaries of our usual work and social circles can limit our chances of discovering them. Even when we meet, introductions that stop at company names and titles do little to reveal what moves someone or the future they hope to create. The more we first ask whether something is immediately useful or likely to produce results, the easier it becomes to overlook possibilities that have yet to take shape. Without knowing one another’s aspirations, it is difficult to see what we could do together, and initiatives remain in separate hands. In communities rich in people and knowledge, the question is how to nurture opportunities for them to meet and begin acting together.

Learning from the knowledge and enthusiasm of people he meets in local communities, he has worked with others to create projects in which their individual strengths can flourish. The experience of turning “Let’s do something together someday” into real activity carries the time spent getting to know one another and learning together. “I want to work with you” also opens the door to asking what we ourselves could do with that person. That is why we can begin by listening to someone close to us and bringing together what we find interesting. Small, practical efforts that grow from there lead to new encounters and further challenges. Taking a cue from the relationships he weaves, we, too, want to value the fun of shaping our communities’ futures together, taking part ourselves rather than leaving it all to someone else.

Back to the Japanese version.