Title

CREATOUR: Catalyzing creative tourism in small towns and rural areas

Sinopse

The book CREATOUR: Catalisando o turismo criativo em cidades de pequena dimensão e em áreas rurais [CREATOUR: Catalyzing creative tourism in small towns and rural areas], published by the University of Coimbra Press, results from the work carried out within the CREATOUR project. This research-and-application project involved five research centres and 40 organizations that designed and implemented creative tourism pilot projects in four regions of Portugal: Norte, Centro, Alentejo and Algarve. The CREATOUR project worked as a research and development phase, catalyzing a network of creative tourism promoters who worked on the design, planning, testing and implementation of creative tourism offers at the local level in small cities and rural areas across the country, while simultaneously connected at the national level. Creative tourism has proven to be an inspiring perspective and direction for local culture-based development and cultural tourism in smaller places. It highlights and articulates the local, the vernacular and the specificities of particular places. The small-scale and interactive nature of activities encourages experimentation, flexibility, meaningful co-learning and creative exchanges between locals and visitors. The CREATOUR project encouraged experimental practices and pilot trials to more fully understand the issues and potential of creative tourism in small cities and rural contexts in Portugal. Interlinking culture, tourism and local development perspectives and methodologies, CREATOUR catalyzed, empowered and learned through an array of bottom-up development approaches and initiatives across the four regions. This book presents the accomplishments, challenges and reflections on the CREATOUR project, with individual chapters detailing each of the 40 pilot projects. These chapters present the development journey and progress of each creative tourism project and the organization (or partnerships) that envisioned and propelled them, the difficulties encountered, the successes, an assessment of the journey so far, and aspirations and plans for the future. The process of elaborating the chapters, written jointly by researchers and professionals from different sectors, resulted in valuable experiences of co-learning and exchange of knowledge, giving rise to narratives which embody the unique flavour and specificity of each initiative. An English-language translation of the Introduction chapter, “Activating creative tourism in small cities and rural areas in Portugal: The CREATOUR research-and-application approach,” is available at: http://creatour.pt/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/livro-creatour_Introducao-EN-21x27-Digital.pdf

The full book is available in open access format here

Date

19 Jul 2022