Cultural Mapping

Cultural mapping is a systematic tool to involve communities in the identification and recording of local cultural assets, with the implication that this knowledge will then be used to inform collective strategies, planning processes, or other initiatives. Cultural mapping promises new ways of describing, accounting for, and coming to terms with the cultural resources of communities and places. These resources are both tangible or quantitative and intangible or qualitative

Cultura y sustentabilidad: cómo las nuevas formas de colaboración permiten replantearnos nuestras ciudades

In this period of “planetary urbanism”, it is alarming to see that artistic images of the future city are frequently dystopic, machine-dominated constructions that tend to erase the presence of people and social interaction from their scope[1]. In contrast, we observe the rising importance of building “people-friendly cities” in which collaborative social processes, diverse knowledge and perspectives, and citizen participation in city planning are central and highly valued. In this latter vision, grassroots organizations, networks and multi-sector partnerships constitute key building blocks for decision-making, taking action and ongoing monitoring and stewardship. And within this purview, new narratives and means of collaboration – new forms of sociability, exchange, cooperation, bonding and joint endeavors – serve to stimulate experiments and innovate new pathways to interlink the socio-cultural, economic, environmental and other dimensions of cities. Cities are strategic terrains where the multiple dynamics of globalization and technology are highly concentrated and where creative responses and innovations to these global dynamics are made legible in concrete, localized forms. Cities are thus central to the political-economic and socio-cultural knowledge systems, decisions and actions that must evolve to collectively address our unsustainable patterns of human relations with the planet and each other. The challenge of the future city is to re-think the city, our way of being, and how we design and enact new models, solutions and possibilities. This is simultaneously a local and global issue. Today, a wide range of “future city” research and design projects, consultancies and collections of crowd-sourced ideas are focusing on ground-level ways to build the future city and improve daily lives through imaginative alternatives to current urban challenges. Through networks of these actors, local actions on the spaces and practices of daily life are propelled by powerful imaginaries that others around the world are engaged in the same or aligned struggles, and opportunities are created for translocal learning, sparking new ideas and local adaptations. While art and culture tend to be found on the margins of debate among futurists, they are often highlighted in these information contexts focusing on concrete actions and social change, as a means to re-think our relations with our urban environment or as tangible projects that change our ways of living together. Experiences internationally have shown how artistic and socio-cultural activities have transformative power to build and change the meanings of the city, relations with the urban territory and connections with each other. Cultural artifacts, activities and narratives can recover, create and embody the symbolic resources and “marginalized wisdom” (Chan 2010) that individuals need to navigate the world around them and potentially become change agents for more sustainable living and urban development practices. However, culture’s place within contemporary urbanization processes to build more sustainable cities is not yet widely understood and thus insufficiently recognized.En esta época de “urbanismo planetario” es alarmante ver que las imágenes que circulan acerca de la ciudad del futuro corresponden a paisajes apocalípticos dominados por las máquinas, las que tienden a borrar la presencia de la gente y la interacción social desde su propia dimensión[1]. En contraste con esto, podemos observar la creciente importancia de crear “ciudades amigables” en donde los procesos sociales colaborativos, los diversos conocimientos y perspectivas y la participación ciudadana en la planificación de la ciudad son elementos clave y altamente valorados. Con respecto a esta última visión, agrupaciones políticas, redes y asociaciones multisectoriales son el pilar para la toma de decisiones, las acciones, el constante monitoreo y administración. Asimismo, dentro de este ámbito, nuevas narrativas y medios de colaboración —nuevas formas de sociabilidad, intercambio, cooperación, vinculación y esfuerzos conjuntos— sirven para estimular e innovar en caminos que enlacen, entre otras cosas, las dimensiones socioculturales, económicas y ambientales de las ciudades. Las ciudades son terrenos estratégicos en donde confluyen múltiples dinámicas de globalización y tecnología y en donde las respuestas e innovaciones a estas dinámicas globales son legibles de manera concreta y localizada. De este modo, las ciudades son el centro de los sistemas de conocimiento político, económico y sociocultural, donde se toman decisiones y acciones que deben evolucionar de manera colectiva para abordar los patrones de insustentabilidad que caracterizan las relaciones humanas con el planeta y con nosotros mismos. El desafío de la ciudad del futuro es replantearse la ciudad, la manera en que somos y cómo diseñamos y representamos los nuevos modelos, soluciones y posibilidades. Este es un conflicto simultáneo tanto nivel local como global. Hoy en día, un gran número de investigaciones y proyectos de diseño que abordan la “ciudad del futuro”, así como también asesorías y grupos de ideas colectivas se están concentrando sentar las bases para su construcción y mejorar la vida diaria a través de alternativas creativas para los desafíos urbanos actuales. Por medio de redes, las acciones locales sobre los espacios y las prácticas cotidianas son impulsadas por poderosos imaginarios que en otras partes del mundo se encuentran comprometidos o alineados bajo la misma lucha. De este modo, se crean oportunidades para el aprendizaje translocal, la emanación de nuevas ideas y la adaptación local. Si bien el arte y la cultura tienden a encontrarse en los márgenes de los debates futuristas, a menudo son resaltados en estos contextos de información, mediante acciones concretas y de cambio social como una forma de replantear nuestra relación con el ambiente urbano, o como proyectos tangibles que cambian nuestra forma de vivir juntos. Las experiencias han demostrado de manera internacional cómo las actividades artísticas y socioculturales poseen un poder transformativo para construir y cambiar el significado de la ciudad, las relaciones con el territorio urbano y las conexiones con los demás. Los artefactos, actividades y narrativas culturales pueden recobrar, crear y representar los recursos simbólicos de la “sabiduría marginalizada” (Chan, 2010) que los individuos necesitan para navegar por el mundo a través de ellos y convertirse en potenciales agentes de cambio para prácticas más sustentables de desarrollo de las ciudades y de la vida. No obstante, el lugar de la cultura en los procesos de urbanización contemporáneos para construir ciudades más sustentables aún no es entendido de manera amplia, por lo que no es lo suficientemente reconocido

Management practices in creative tourism: narratives by managers from international institutions to a more sustainable form of tourism

This article analyses the managerial practices implemented by international organisations that provide platforms for promoting and carrying out creative tourism activities and workshops. The methodology of this research was conducted in four phases. The first phase consisted of Internet-based research to identify organisations involved in creative tourism and 24 institutions were found. In the second phase, we analysed the information provided on the institutions’ websites. In the third phase, we prepared an interview script and sent it to those institutions. We received 12 positive replies and held a semi-structured interview with those managers. In the last phase, the narratives of the interviews were subjected to content analysis. The 12 managers interviewed, between the ages of 35 and 56, belong to public and private entities and lead technical teams. The studied institutions displayed good practices for creative tourism and strategic lines to consolidate this tourist product in the future. This study is pertinent and original because no international study has analysed in detail the management practices implemented by creative tourism platforms and a consistent characterisation of the profile of the creative tourist is yet to be outlined. It can also help institutions involved in creative tourism to better understand the international state of the field in this tourism segment.This research was conducted within the project "CREATOUR -Creative Tourism Destination Development in Small Cities and Rural Areas" Project, funded by European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) through the Operational Programme of Competitiveness and Internationalisation -COMPETE 2020 and by National Funds through FCT -Foundation for Science and Technology under the project POCI-0145-FEDER-016437

Policy recommendations on creative tourism development in small cities and rural areas

Based on CREATOUR’s findings, this policy-oriented briefing report proposes recommendations to authorities and agencies at all levels (national, regional, and local) relating to the development of creative tourism initiatives in small cities and rural areas in Portugal. It is centrally informed by the needs of the CREATOUR pilot organizations, which were articulated within discussions between researchers and practitioners. We also considered public policies related to rural tourism development and the types of public policies needed to foster and support cultural and creative organizations in small cities and rural areas. The recommendations recognize and reinforce the need to develop new structures to foster ongoing interconnections between the cultural and tourism sectors