Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Easy and not-so-easy models of tourism and creativity
As Richards and Wilson (2007a) argue, in many places the economic arguments for supporting
a relationship between tourism and creativity are too powerful to resist (particularly in
places like Singapore, where the creativity strategy is basically tourism-driven; see Chang,
Chapter 17
in this volume; Ooi, 2007). Since 2007, the economic imperative for creative
strategies in tourism has only increased. But what kinds of tourism development models based
on creativity have been adopted in practice?
In understanding how creativity may present tourism with new opportunities for
(re)positioning, competitiveness and the avoidance of standardisation, we might refer to an
'easy' model of creative tourism production and consumption when considering Florida's
(2002, 2005) ideas. Indeed, a widely adopted strategy even in the most 'progressive' and
innovative tourism destinations has been to attract the creative (tourist and resident) classes.
This extends to the promotion of spatially engineered clusters of creative production and
consumption along the lines of
studentscapes, ethnoscapes, designscapes, gastroscapes
, traditional
and contemporary
craftscapes
and a whole range of other spatially demarcated 'post-tourism'
leisure settings (often little more than thematic, high-end, cosmopolitan consumption oppor-
tunities rather than sites with a critical mass of creative production per se).
There is, however, also a 'diffi cult' model of creativity-led tourism development, which
renders explicit the important role of space and place in more sustainable creativity-based
tourism). More diffi cult it may be, yet probably with increased viability, added value and a better
shot at increased sustainability. The challenge for authorities and producers is to actively identify
those areas of creativity (an infi nitely renewable resource) endogenous to the place, which can
be spatially anchored in their specifi c destination and developed as distinctive products and
experiences only available for production and consumption in that particular place (Richards
and Wilson, 2007a). In the long term, more success and added value is likely to be generated by
developing endogenous models of creativity and the indigenous creative classes, rather than
imported ones. However, it should be remembered that 'endogenous' creativity requires much
more translation and interpretation, because it must be made readable for external audiences.
By way of an example, my recent (forthcoming) research on 'genial landscapes' analyses a
network of four municipalities along Catalonia's Costa Daurada that all have some (generally
limited) claim or connection to one of four artistic 'geniuses' - Pablo Picasso (Horta de Sant
Joan), Joan Miró (Mont-Roig del Camp), Pau Casals (el Vendrell) and Antoni Gaudí (Reus) -
which will be the object of a new, networked tourism product. A tourism innovation network
based on this kind of high cultural expression is nothing new, of course. What is new here,
however, is that there remains little (or no) physical, tangible evidence of the connection
between these geniuses and these places (unlike the much more prominent, visible and
tangible example of the 'Dalí Triangle' to the north on the Costa Brava, where a large concen-
tration of important artworks and memorabilia are displayed within three key and well-
documented sites that featured prominently in Dalí's life). Rather, the object of the exercise
is to situate through signs and symbols the works of these geniuses within the landscapes that
had originally inspired their creation, almost elevating the status of these inspirational land-
scapes above their (more valued and famous) artistic representations.
The challenge for these four destinations in collaboration is to bring these intangible and
somewhat tenuous relationships between artistic expression (art, architecture, music) and
place to life for visitors (and not just 'visually' - see Edensor and Falconer,
Chapter 9)
. The
challenge for the tourist, on the other hand, is to anchor and situate their new and pre-
existing knowledge and imaginaries of these geniuses within physical landscapes. Via
