This Tourism and Management Studies Special Issue on Creative Tourism is born under the scope of a very original project: the CREATOUR - Creative Tourism Destination Development in Small Cities and Rural Areas. The CREATOUR project is the first action-research project in Portugal whose objectives are to study and to stimulate the creative tourism initiatives in small places and rural areas. CREATOUR is an incubator/demonstration and multidisciplinary research initiative, supporting collaborative research processes involving five Portuguese research centres working with a range of cultural/creative organisations and other stakeholders located in small cities across Portugal in the Norte, Centro, Alentejo and Algarve regions.Agência financiadora Joint Activities Programme of PORTUGAL 2020 	
( Project 16437 ); COMPETE2020; Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologiainfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Cabeça, Sónia Moreira

Gonçalves, Alexandra

Marques, João Filipe

Tavares, Mirian

Tourism & Management Studies

English

Universidade do Algarve

Creative tourism special issue: foreword

Sapientia (Univ. do Algarve)

 5   Tourism & Management Studies, 15(SI), 2019 Creative Tourism Special Issue - Foreword Coined in 2000 by Richards and Raymond (2000), the concept of Creative Tourism is now relatively stabilised and broadly used in the research about the emergent modalities of cultural tourism (Gonçalves, 2008). According to its initial conceptualisation, Creative Tourism implies active participation of tourists in learning experiences that stimulate the development of their ‘creative potential’. The growing use of the concept can be related to two significant contemporary societal trends. On the one hand, the shift from ‘mass cultural tourism’ towards the growing interest in the authenticity of  ‘everyday life’ of the visited places (Guerreiro & Marques, 2017). On the other hand, the success of the concept can be linked to the cultural change that has been designated by ‘the creative turn’: e.g. the insistence on the ‘rhetoric of creativity’. Cities must be creative in order to attract not only tourists but also the ‘creative industries’ (Tavares, 2014, 2015) and  ‘creative classes’ (Florida, 2003; Cruz, 2016); tourism destinations, tourism experiences and tourists themselves must be, in some way ‘creative’, that is to say be immersive, interactive and meaningful. But Creative Tourism can also be seen as a catalyst for the socio-economic development of regions less prone to traditional tourism, a means to valorise a territory’s cultural and natural specificity at a community scale (Cabeça, 2018). Small places, rural areas, ethnic neighbourhoods, territories with aged populations etc. may, through Creative Tourism initiatives, attract visitors invigorating the economy and demography and preserving, at the same time, their tangible and intangible cultural resources (Cabeça, Gonçalves, Marques, Tavares, 2018a).  This Tourism and Management Studies Special Issue on Creative Tourism is born under the scope of a very original project: the CREATOUR - Creative Tourism Destination Development in Small Cities and Rural Areas. The CREATOUR project is the first action-research project in Portugal whose objectives are to study and to stimulate the creative tourism initiatives in small places and rural areas. CREATOUR is an incubator/demonstration and multidisciplinary research initiative, supporting collaborative research processes involving five Portuguese research centres working with a range of cultural/creative organisations and other stakeholders located in small cities across Portugal in the Norte, Centro, Alentejo and Algarve regions. The project is informed by theoretical and methodological approaches from cultural/creative sector development, tourism, and regional development.  Its overall objective is to develop and pilot an integrated approach and research agenda for creative tourism in small cities and rural areas in Portugal, developing strong links within and amongst regions. Building on a twofold approach, CREATOUR intertwines Theory and Experimentation, combining multidisciplinary theoretical and methodological frameworks, cultural mapping, and benchmarking exercises with the development of an array of Pilots, or creative tourism case studies (www.creatour.pt).    This Special Issue is also a part of a larger bibliographical production of the CREATOUR project, within which we would like to highlight Duxbury, 2018a, Duxbury, 2018b; Bakas and Duxbury, 2018; Bakas, Duxbury and Castro, 2018; Cabeça, Gonçalves, Marques and Tavares, 2018a, 2018b; Remoaldo and Ribeiro, 2019.  The article that opens this Issue is authored by the creator of the concept of Creative Tourism himself. Greg Richards publishes here a deepen version of his keynote presentation at the 1st CREATOUR International Conference whose broad theme was “The State of the Art in Creative Tourism” (Curia, Portugal, June 1st 2017). In his text, Richards situates Creative Tourism initiatives clearly within “the broader ‘creative turn’ in society”. But departing from the idea that this ‘creative turn’ took place first in urban territories and global cities, the author puts the pertinent question about the role of creative tourism regarding the development strategies of smaller places. Through the examples of Guimarães (European Capital of Culture, 2012) and Den Bosch (Hieronymus Bosch hometown), Richards shows that creativity can play an important role creating buzz, attracting people and fostering economic development. The author’s main argument is that creative tourism initiatives, based in closer interpersonal relations, in the immersion of the visitors in the visited communities, in more authentic experiences can be, not only important means for the development of small places but also a way to preserve heritage and local lifestyles. Notwithstanding, the author also draws the reader’s attention to the pitfalls of the development of creative tourism products in small places. Among the significant dangers is the temptation of emulating other place’s creative experiences, namely big cities strategies and practices. In order to be perceived by visitors as unique and authentic, creativity must be anchored on the cultural specificities of each place. Richards proposes than that, «Rather than seeing creativity as a model of attracting the creative class or developing a creative city, smaller places should see creativity as a mode of thinking that allows them to maximise their potential» (p. 9).  The second text of this issue consists in a robust analytical incursion in the theoretical and empirical literature about Creative Tourism. Carvalho, Costa and Ferreira propose in their text an exploration of the theories that are subjacent in the research on Creative Tourism. Through an in-depth analysis of the vast emerging literature on this subject, the authors identified the three main theoretical paradigms that are being used on the multiple approaches to the Creative Tourism phenomena: the paradigm of the relation between creativity and tourism, the paradigm of the post-modern specialized consumption and finally the paradigm of the co-creation and experience economy. Cruz, Perestrelo, Gato and Costa, authors of the third article of this issue, are active researchers of the CREATOUR team and members of the DINAMIA’CET-IUL research centre. One of the tasks assigned to this centre within the CREATOUR project was the evaluation and monitoring of the implementation of a Creative Tourism Network in Portugal. The presented article, suggestively entitled ‘Connecting the dots’, consists in an initial evaluation of the goals and expectations of the first twenty creative tourism actors (Pilots) selected to be monitored by the CREATOUR project and, at the same time, in a first mapping of the existing network connections between them. The Stakeholder Analysis and the Social Network Analysis applied to the content of a set of interviews made during the first stage Laboratories of Ideas of the CREATOUR project, allowed the authors to identify the main strategic challenges faced by these actors and to draw a portrait of their relationships at the national and regional levels. The authors concluded that the main challenges that  6   Tourism & Management Studies, 15(SI), 2019  the creative tourism actors face in small cities and rural areas are the necessity to increase the attractiveness of their territories, along with the needs of renovation and valuation of the cultural heritage. On the other hand, the study confirmed the regional polarization of the actor’s connections: «the network of creative tourism actors still features a low density (…), and it is only very slightly based on networking dynamics and network logics» (p. 30). The fourth article of this issue, although not being directly about Creative Tourism, takes part of the broad ‘creative turn’ we have spoken above. In fact, the text focus on the micro and small business manager’s attitudes towards creativity and innovation. The research presented here demonstrates clearly that the attitudes of the managers towards innovation practices and creativity are much stronger among those who are linked to the creative industries sector.  The fifth article results from the research of the Editors of this issue within the CREATOUR project. Cabeça, Gonçalves, Marques and Tavares propose here a reflection on the Cultural Mapping technique as a powerful tool in the monitoring and design of creative tourist offers. Given that Creative Tourism bounds people to places and is deeply linked to the territory, and the communities, this text presents an example of the use of cultural mapping, focusing on the importance of emotional and intangible mapping. It also addresses the use of cultural mapping in creative tourism, describing the CREATOUR experience, and its outcomes. The experience evidenced the importance of cultural mapping to a more sustainable offer and the marketing of destinations All the contributions to this issue underline that the relation between creativity and tourism, namely the Creative tourism products and experiences is a growing area that needs further attention from the academy as well as from the industry.  Tourism new phenomenon’s and scientific approaches are really dynamic and usually intrinsically related to global major societal tendencies and advances because tourism is all about people. The ongoing research will have to better study creative ecosystems’ and the sustainability of the offers developed under the name of Creative Tourism. Impacts associated with such an in deep experience should be better analysed.  Acknowledgement CREATOUR (project nº 16437) is funded under the Joint Activities Programme of PORTUGAL 2020, by COMPETE2020, POR Lisboa, POR Algarve and Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia. The guest editors João Filipe Marques CIEO | Centro de Investigação sobre Espaço e Organizações – Universidade do Algarve, jfmarq@ualg.pt   Alexandra Rodrigues Gonçalves CIEO | Centro de Investigação sobre Espaço e Organizações – Universidade do Algarve, marodrig@ualg.pt   Sónia Moreira Cabeça CIEO | Centro de Investigação sobre Espaço e Organizações – Universidade do Algarve, soniacabeca@hotmail.com  Mirian Tavares CIAC | Centro de Investigação em Artes e Comunicação – Universidade do Algarve, mtavares@ualg.pt   References Bakas, F. E., Duxbury, N. & Castro, T.V. (2018). Creative tourism: Catalysing artisan entrepreneur networks in rural Portugal. International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour and Research, 24, Special Issue on Artisan, Cultural and Tourism Entrepreneurship. Bakas, Fiona; Nancy Duxbury (2018) Development of rural areas and small cities through creative tourism: The CREATOUR project. Anais Brasileiros de Estudos Turísticos, 8 (3), 74-84. Cabeça, S.M, Gonçalves, A.R., Marques, J.F & Tavares, M (2018a). Contributions of creative tourism to sustainable development: the CREATOUR research and incubation project, Proceedings of HERITAGE 2018 - 6th International Conference on Heritage and Sustainable Development, Granada, Spain, 1671-1680, 22 pp. Cabeça, S.M, Gonçalves, A.R., Marques, J.F & Tavares, M (2018b). Valorizar o Interior Algarvio. Experiências de Turismo Criativo da rede CREATOUR em territórios de Baixa Densidade". Atas do III Encuentro Iberoamericano de Turismo Rural. outubro, Évora (Portugal) and Mérida (Spain), 28-31. Cabeça, S.M. (2018). “Cultural Mapping: A Sustainable Methodology for Intangible Cultural Heritage”, Memoriamedia Review 3, Art. 5, 9 pp. Cruz, A. R. (2016). (N)Um Lugar ao Sol: Contributos do Turismo para as Dinâmicas Criativas e para a Atracção da Classe Criativa no Algarve. Tese para obtenção do grau de Doutor, Universidade do Algarve, Faro. Duxbury, N. (2018a). Revisiting cultural production in small cities and rural areas from a creative tourism perspective: the CREATOUR project in Portugal. Proceedings from ICCPR2018 - 10th International Conference on Cultural Policy Research: "The cultural governance of global flows: the past and future". August 21-25, Tallinn University, Estonia, 14 pp. Florida, R. (2003). Cities and the Creative Class, City and Community, 2(1), 3–19. Gonçalves, A. R. (2008). As Comunidades Criativas, o Turismo e a Cultura. Dos Algarves, Revista da ESGHT/UALG, (17), 11–18. Guerreiro, André, Marques, J. F. (2017) Visita Guiada à Fábrica de Antiguidades: Sociologia, Turismo e Autenticidade, Anais Brasileiros de Estudos Turísticos,7, (1), 8 – 22 P. Remoaldo, J.C. Ribeiro (2019). Creative Tourism as a new challenge to the development of destinations – the Portuguese Case Study”. In M. Peris-Ortiz, M.R. Cabrera-Flores, and A. Serrano-Santoyo (Eds.), Cultural and Creative Industries. A Path to Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Washington: Springer, 81-99. Richards, G., & Raymond, C. (2000). Creative Tourism. ATLAS News, (23), 16–20. Tavares, Mirian (2014) A arte nas indústrias criativas: pode a arte salvar o mundo?". Revista Lusófona de Estudos Culturais, 2 (2), 53-61. Tavares, Mirian (2015) Tracing Limits–Public and Private in the Cartography of Contemporary Cities: The Dialogue Boxes on Street Windows Project, In Pinto, Hugo (Ed.) Resilient Territories. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 167-176. 

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