Fab City High School Challenge Guangzhou

The Pioneer Community AI Memory Agent challenge addressed the risk of losing valuable local knowledge, everyday stories and cultural memories within a real urban community in Guangzhou. During initial field research and observation, students discovered that important community knowledge existed in fragmented forms, including residents’ oral histories, photographs, historical materials, physical locations and personal memories. Much of this information was unstructured, difficult to search or reuse, and vulnerable to disappearing over time. Rather than beginning with a predefined technological solution, students first investigated why community memory should be preserved, whose stories should be represented, how authenticity and privacy should be handled, and how digital technology could support recording, connection, interpretation and participation. The challenge involved students, a teacher facilitator and multiple stakeholder perspectives, including long-term residents, young users, visitors, parents and potential community administrators. Students recognized that different users had different needs: older residents may hold valuable memories but find complex digital tools difficult, while younger users value interactive exploration and administrators need reliable systems for verification and maintenance. The challenge therefore evolved from simply “building a website” into designing a sustainable digital community-memory system capable of preserving, structuring, connecting and sharing local knowledge while supporting future community participation.