Creative Tourism in Smaller Communities: Place, Culture, and Local Representation

Abstract

This edited volume by Kathleen Scherf provides an engaging roster of rural and small community voices, mostly from the global north, who share stories and describe research on creative tourism. Distinguishing and illustrating this brand appears one of the goals of the book, one that is only partly achieved as not all chapters fall squarely within that frame. The book makes important contributions by connecting conversations and literature from creative economy, cultural tourism, placemaking, rural development, place branding, heritage preservation, and cultural planning. Another contribution is – and where there is consistency – is with stories of communities finding and building on unique assets, retaining local control while welcoming outsiders. Authors position tourism efforts in the context of economic diversification of rural communities hard hit by outmigration, resource extraction, and climate change, presenting what Schref calls “tremendous and exciting opportunities for smaller communities” (2). Nancy Duxbury in Chapter 2 suggests these strategies also may avoid “urban colonization of countryside” (31). Authors assert that when well-grounded these tourism initiatives, “can be ecologically, socially, economically, and culturally sustainable” (2). Nominal critical assessment of this assertion is presented. Creative tourism is distinguished from cultural tourism and experience tourism with an emphasis, according to Duxbury, “placed on the creation process and capacity for the visitor to engage in the activity” (29). Scherf sees creative tourism responding to, “desires for authentic, human-scale immersion in local life, culture, and knowledge” (1). Smaller communities, Schref claims, are “especially well-suited to hosting tourists who seek connection with the local” (1). To fit the brand of creative tourism requires two sides of a coin. The first is