Views and Reviews
Community Panel - "A Dynamic Nexus: Tourism, Communities, and the Arts".
Participants: Andrew Beattie (Homebaked CLT), Tristan Brady-Jacobs (Baltic Triangle), Gerry Proctor (Engage Liverpool CIC).
Chair: Aggelos Panayiotopoulos
The panel examines the complex relationships that exist between tourism, community development, and artistic expression. In so doing, the panel will discuss important topics including the role of tourism as a catalyst for change, equality and inclusion, creative placemaking and community development, arts and cultural tourism, and long-term sustainability.
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Beyond attracting visitors, what is the impact of tourism on local communities?
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Can tourists be attracted to cultural sites like museums, galleries, and festivals without sacrificing authenticity?
- Can creative interventions improve wellbeing, establish a sense of community, and transform public spaces?
- Can cultural projects promote civic engagement and revitalise neighbourhoods?
- Can tourism and the arts strengthen the voices of the marginalised?
- Can tourism and the arts remove obstacles, encourage representation, and push for ethical travel?
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How do culture and the arts affect community pride and social cohesion?
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Is it possible for tourism, communities, and the arts to coexist peacefully in the future?
Featured Decoding Cultural Events: Visual Insights into the Perspectives of Artists and Event Organizers
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Mireya Yadranka Morgana Orellana, Sergio Moreno Gil, Patricia Picazo
The performing arts encompass various artistic forms, such as music, dance, theatre, and drama. These arts serve as a central service and provide artistic experiences, contributing to education, communication, economy, and tourism. The attentional dimension of performing arts has a significant role in audience engagement. Despite this, studies on the attention of the arts are scarce. This research aims to enhance the understanding of the visual interest that images related to dance, theatre, and music generate in the performing arts for internal agents, artists, and programmers through a multi-measurement study using the eye-tracking technique and short self-assessment questionnaire with questions related to the 17 photographic stimuli selected for the use of eye tracking. The participants of this study were artists and programmers who attended MAPAS 2022 (South Atlantic Performing Arts Market), which took place in July 2022 in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Written informed consent was obtained from all 22 participants. The results indicate that visual responses are most captivated when subjects, especially their facial expressions, are featured on the screen. Images where individuals play a secondary role prompt viewers to explore the image but ultimately concentrate on the subjects' facial features. Performing arts generate the most interest, contrasting participants' self-reported preferences. Artists focus on the main scene, while programmers have a broader perspective, considering environmental aspects and extracting more information from the scene. However, both groups share a commonality in displaying greater interest and attention when the image showcases individuals engaged in activities they identify with professionally.
The Vale of Keswick and Kaaterskill Clove: Inventing the Tourist Saunter
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Mark Minster
The scenic walk— the saunter— remains the product of Romantic-era epistemology and rapidly transforming transportation infrastructure. In its modes and motives as well as its destinations—the earliest of which include England’s Lake District and America’s Catskills—the saunter imagines itself to be a simple reflective stroll in nature, a natural act of feeling and freedom. A sensitive walker moves through a picturesque spot, with emotional knowledge that comes as naturally as art that appears to be nature’s own. Walking automatically becomes feeling, the result of a solitary self in an ideal landscape. The scenic walker, a tourist who thinks of herself as an artist, celebrates freedom as a retreat from society. And yet, as Buzard, Fussell, and others have noted, walking tourists who ramble off the beaten path become transformative, economically as well as physically. They bring a demand for transportation to their walks— steamboats, railways, roads—accelerating the technological changes that make walking meaningful. That demand, plus nineteenth-century increases in urbanization, purchasing power, and leisure time meant that what seemed to be a function of nature or feeling was a thoroughly social phenomenon. For the saunterer through the Catskills and through the Lakes, both eye and gait were markers of social class, of manners as well as taste. And thus, one implication of the saunter is that it erases its own aestheticized cultural and ecological content in the emotive wash of simplicity, liberty, and escape, simultaneously sanctioning the economies it tries to forget.
Building Bridges through Heritage: Co-creating Cultural Visits with Ukrainians at the Exile Memorial Museum in Spain
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Marta Salvador Almela, Núria Abellan Calvet, Laia Encinar Prat
Historical memory spaces have the potential to promote values such as non-violence, empathy, and the inclusion of migrant populations. To facilitate understanding of difficult heritage sites, the hot interpretation theory sets four goals: knowledge sharing, understanding, imagination, and peacebuilding (Uzzell, 1989; Zhu, 2022). Thus, focusing on heritage linked to the Spanish Civil War in Catalonia, this research employs visits to foster education, reconciliation, and the integration of migrant communities (Encinar et al., 2023). More concretely, the research connects the Spanish Republican exile's historical context with the contemporary Ukrainian exile due to the fact that over 25,000 Ukrainian war migrants have arrived in Catalonia (Idescat, 2023). The main objective of this research is to analyse guided tours at the Exile Memorial Museum (Spain) and design a co-created tour involving Ukrainians, comparing standard visits with the co-created experience. Employing mixed methods, the study initially conducts content analysis of museum tours. Subsequent field visits with six Ukrainians involve a co-creation process, highlighting the need for contextualisation, personal stories, audiovisual resources, and empathy towards the exiled. Preliminary results suggest that disseminating historical facts aids individual awareness, but group connections remain a challenge. Future steps involve standard and co-created visits for more Ukrainians, followed by a questionnaire to assess the impact on knowledge, understanding, emotions, and reflections. This ongoing research aims to guide heritage interpretation for exiled groups, fostering intercultural understanding and contributing to the museum's adaptation.
