Rejuvenation old town | with My Think City
- JJ Chuan
- Dec 26, 2025
- 5 min read
Updated: Dec 28, 2025
A “story-doing” approach that allows local communities to ideate, direct and participate in full effect in this social practice.
“Ready, Cassette, Go!” workshop is organised by Singapore social enterprise rehyphen who specialises in collecting discarded cassette tapes from the local community, and then weaves them into pieces of MusicCloth®. Rehyphen then transforms them into MusicCloth® art pieces and products as an effort to reduce and eliminate plastic waste, while giving the product a new life. According to one of M.I.T’s press reports titled “The cost of Music”, there were 56 million kilograms of plastic used to make physical cassette tapes since it launched in 1963 (Citizen Bravo, 2015). Today, we are fast evolving into a culture that primarily downloads and consumes entertainment digitally. Analogue forms such as cassette tapes are slowly being phased out. Rehyphen therefore used cassette tapes as a medium to encourage the public to reimagine how we care for our planet and challenged our community to make waste and memories beautiful.
This workshop originally started on Airbnb experience platform where it received a high score of 4.96 out of 5 stars with 45 reviews in total. Airbnb launched airbnb experience to provide local experts with the opportunity to host highly unique experiences to local and tourists. This differentiates itself from traditional tours and services. Hosts who offer experiences do not have to host overnight guests as Airbnb property hosting. With word of mouth and high reviews on Airbnb experience, rehyphen has been hosting “Ready, Cassette, Go!” workshop locally and internationally, where it has been commissioned by different organisations and governments to pass climate change message to the public in an informal manner.
This fieldwork report focuses on “Ready, Cassette, Go!” workshop in Think City Johor Bahru, which was funded by the sovereign wealth fund of the Government of Malaysia — Khazanah Nasional Berhad. This up-cycling workshop was free to public and consisted a total of 6 sessions in 9 hours, which was equally divided into three Saturdays. Each session was 1.5 hours from 11am to 12:30pm, and 15pm to 16:30pm. The expected group size was 15 people per session. Kids aged 7 and above were allowed to join this workshop with their parents. Think City is a consultancy and project delivery partner who works on “placemaking, resilience (environmental and social), analytics, conversation and protection of heritage building” ( Think city, 2024). Its mission is to make cities more liveable, environmentally and socially resilient and sustainable. ( Think city, 2024). The venue of the workshop is at Think City Johor Bahru office, located at Tan Hiok Nee Heritage Street. This street is known as Johor Bahru’s Heritage Food Trail, a mix of old famous local food store and surrounded by new hipster cafe. Moreover, it is only 15 minutes walking distant from JB customs which makes it a must-stop for tourists when visiting Johor Bahru, especially Singaporeans during weekends. ‘When people come from Singapore, they want to eat here as it’s cheaper most of the time.’ ( Lok, 2023) Besides, hunting authentic local food and cafe hopping, there were not much activities for visitors to participate here. Therefore, the objectives of the “Ready, Cassette, Go!” workshop in Think City was to create a meaningful and educational workshop that locals and tourists could participate during their short trip in Johor Bahru. They were guided by mission that small acts transform the city we live everyday.
rehyphen partnered with local cafes to promote this up-cycling workshop. Its posters with a retro cassette tape and details of the workshop were seen at local cafes and neighbourhoods along Tan Hiok Nee street two weeks before the workshop kick started. 4 Instagram posts and 2 Facebook posts were posted on rehyphen and Think City social media to promote this workshop.
On the actual day, I brought 60 cassette tapes, 40 pieces of A5 weaving boards, 20 felting needles, a signboard with the details of the workshop, three boxes of Banana Cake from the JB’s famous Hip Joo Bakery as a refreshment to the venue to set up for the day. Pre-registered guests started to walk into Think City office for the workshop on 11am. Other guests who passed by Think City office were curious about what was going on when they saw people gathered around. They walked in to learn more about the workshop, and eventually joined the workshop. 20% of guests were pre-registered and 80% were walk-in guests. The majority of the guests were pre-registered and comprised kids with parents who live in Johor Bahru. Walk in-guests were majority youths and couples from Singapore and other states of Malaysia. All guests who joined this up-cycling workshop had a chance to access exclusive cassette tapes which were donated by the public. They were also able to pick their favourite cassette tapes and weave it into a piece of MusicCloth®. Their self-portraits were taken by me in order to trace their silhouette for the final artwork. Facilitators were around to guide them on how to weave their piece of MusicCloth® into their own self-portrait. The reason for choosing MusicCloth® self portrait as the final art work was that we want to recognise each individual as important in the fight of climate change.
After the workshop, guests could bring back their own MusicCloth® portrait as a unique souvenir of their Johor Bahru trip, which will also reminded them a sustainable way of living when they return back home.
After the workshop ended, guests who brought their kids to the workshops commented on the feedback form as:
“ So thoughtfully designing this meaningful, enjoyable and satisfying experience. The MusicCloth movement has my full support in raising awareness about the problem of plastic waste!”
Similarly, guests who randomly walk in and join the workshop highlighted that “ready, cassette, go” workshop was one of their highlight of the whole Johor Bahru trip.
“ It was a truly unique and unforgettable experience and the portrait is something that I would definitely want to keep forever. :)”
“she basically just like holding a magic wand then gives a new life to those wasted cassette. I like the way she sees the value in something wasted.”
“She generously share her passion and skills with participants, and inspire them towards up-cycling of waste. ”
The idea of MusicCloth® is not just an innovative product, service and experience, but also an innovative system that embrace the change. Rehyphen adopts a “story-doing” approach that allows local communities to ideate, direct and participate in full effect in this social practice. It also takes the idea of participant-generated content to the next level, fully immersing the local community into every integral part. Quoted from Think City management team Mr. Gan Yi Reng “The heart of this process is the people, always. Working with communities and different stakeholders is key and the idea here is a participatory process of thought.” Music is a universal language regardless of nationality and religion. The final goal is to use music as an important tool to pass climate change messages to the general public in a non-formal manner. At the same time, rehyphen encourages the public to see waste with fresh perspective and get curious about how things are made.
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