Cultural mapping as a methodology and paradigm holds tremendous power to create conditions for change by bringing communities together in new ways to co-create new knowledge and understanding. At its core, cultural mapping aims to make visible the ways that local cultural assets, stories, practices, relationships, memories, and rituals constitute places as meaningful locations, while bringing a diverse range of stakeholders into conversation about the cultural dimensions and potentials of a place. With the design of cultural mapping projects tightly linked to local needs, issues, and aspirations, cultural mapping practices vary widely and the field is characterized by a high degree of experimentation. Its interdisciplinarity perspectives, techniques, and processes emphasize participatory approaches, which require an ethics of care with the communities engaged in these projects.

This 5-day intensive summer school offers a unique opportunity to learn how to design and conduct cultural mapping projects, enabling participants to enhance their knowledge on cultural mapping approaches and processes, gain skills applying cultural mapping techniques in practice, examine ethics of care in this community-engaged work, and explore how to connect findings to cultural/creative tourism and local development policy. This is a unique opportunity to learn from internationally acclaimed scholars and practitioners.

The summer school will include daily visits, learning seminars, and hands-on workshops where participants will actively learn about and engage in cultural mapping projects while addressing place-specific real-life local development issues. Cultural mapping approaches will address cultural assets and resources, both tangible and intangible; heritage and history; and living narratives and voices of the community and place. Application areas to be discussed in the summer school include: community-based cultural and creative tourism, cultural planning, local territorial and strategic planning, and engaged social change working with communities.

The mapping exercises will examine, discuss, and bring new ideas to existing development activities aiming to attract and sustain a local cultural and creative critical mass in Caldas da Rainha. Connected to this, the work will link these initiatives to broader local development issues, to the city’s UNESCO Creative City designation, and to the fostering of cultural and creative tourism in the municipality.

This CES Summer School will take place in Caldas da Rainha, a UNESCO Creative City of Crafts and Folk Arts, with an Art Nouveau and rich artistic history and a lively contemporary arts scene. The course will have various tangible outputs and culminate in an artistic public presentation of the findings to the local population, curated by the participants in collaboration with SILOS Contentor Criativo and Destino Caldas Association.

Thematic area(s) of the course:

Cultural mapping processes and methodologies
Art-informed cultural mapping
Place-based meanings
Cultural/artistic heritage
Creative tourism
Dimensions of care with communities

Participants

The summer school is designed to discuss and practice a variety of cultural mapping techniques and approaches at an introductory level, for participants with limited experience with community-based and cultural mapping. We welcome graduate and PhD students, postdoctoral researchers, local cultural planners and policy-makers, and practitioners in the cultural and tourism sectors as well as individuals working in and with communities in regeneration/revitalization processes. Participants should have a good level of English as the Summer School will be held in English and group work will be an essential component of the course.

Key dates

Earlybird registration deadline: 18 February 2022
Final registration deadline: 7 March 2022
Summer School dates: 21-25 March 2022

Registration fee

Earlybird registration fee | Students: €375 // Non-Students: 425€
Late registration fee | Students: €425 // Non-Students: 475€
 

What does the fee cover?

The fee includes all materials, sessions, visits, coffee breaks, lunches (five days), and farewell dinner.
The fee does not cover accommodation or transportation.
(A special accommodation rate is available at a partner hotel. See more information in the ‘Getting to Caldas da Rainha and Accommodation’ section)

Maximum number of registrations: 25
Minimum number of registrations: 17

For any questions, please contact us at: creatour@ces.uc.pt

Coordination team | Nancy Duxbury, Tiago Vinagre de Castro, Sílvia Silva, and Cláudia Pato de Carvalho (CES), Mariana Calaça Baptista (author and promotor), and Nicola Henriques (SILOS Contentor Criativo)

Related research projects:

CREATOUR: Creative Tourism Destination Development in Small Cities and Rural Areas (CES)
Cultural Mapping, Planning and Impact Assessment for Sustainable and Just Urban Development (CES)
Cultural Mapping Researcher-in-Residence Programme (Thompson Rivers University, Canada)

The summer school will run from Monday to Friday, with an optional social activity on Saturday.
Each morning there will be a lecture and orientating workshop, with afternoons used for in-the-community cultural mapping hands-on experience.
The participants will work in groups of 4 or 5 (depending on registrations). At the end of each afternoon, groups will assemble to review and assess their findings.
On Friday afternoon/evening, the summer school will present the week’s work and findings in a creative public event.

Download the programme outline.
 

Nancy Duxbury, PhD, is a Senior Researcher and Coordinator of the interdisciplinary Thematic Line on Urban Cultures, Sociabilities, and Participation at the Centre for Social Studies (CES), Coordinator of the CES CREATOUR Observatory at CES, and a member of the European Expert Network on Culture (EENC). She was the Principal Investigator of “CREATOUR: Creative Tourism Destination Development in Small Cities and Rural Areas” (2016-2020), a national research-and-application project that aims to catalyze and develop creative tourism in small cities and rural areas across four regions of Portugal, and European Consultant to the policy dialogue project, “Cultural Mapping, Planning and Impact Assessment for Sustainable and Just Urban Development,” developed by the African Centre for Cities and the SA-EU Dialogue Facility, Cape Town, South Africa. She is also lead of the CES team of the H2020 project “UNCHARTED: Understanding, Capturing and Fostering the Societal Value of Culture” (2020-2023), coordinated by the University of Barcelona. Her research interests include culture in local sustainable development; culture-based development models in smaller communities; culture-based creative tourism strategies; and cultural mapping approaches to understand and articulate place. Edited books: Animation of Public Space through the Arts: Toward More Sustainable Communities (2013), Cultural Mapping as Cultural Inquiry (2015), Culture and Sustainability in European Cities: Imagining Europolis (2015), Cultural Policies for Sustainable Development (2018), Artistic Approaches to Cultural Mapping: Activating Imaginaries and Means of Knowing (2018), A Research Agenda for Creative Tourism (2019), Creative Tourism: Activating Cultural Resources and Engaging Creative Travellers (2021), and Cultural Sustainability, Tourism, and Development: (Re)articulations in Tourism Contexts (2021).

Will Garrett-Petts, PhD, is Professor of English, Rhetoric, & Canadian Studies and Associate Vice-President of Research and Graduate Studies at Thompson Rivers University, Canada. His recent books and catalogues include Cultural Mapping as Cultural Inquiry (2015); Whose Culture is it, Anyway? Community Engagement in Small Cities (2014); Writing about Literature (2nd ed. 2013); Imaging Place (2009); Artists’ Statements and the Nature of Artistic Inquiry (2007); The Small Cities Book: On the Cultural Future of Small Cities (2005); and PhotoGraphic Encounters: The Edges and Edginess of Reading Prose Pictures and Visual Fictions (2000). He is Series Editor (with Nancy Duxbury) for the “Small Cities: Sustainability in Community and Cultural Engagement” book series (University of Calgary Press). His research explores questions of visual and verbal culture, cultural and vernacular mapping, and the artistic animation of small cities. He also has a special interest in the theory and practice of including students in undergraduate research. Garrett-Petts co-edited Artistic Approaches to Cultural Mapping (2019 from Routledge).

Shamila Rahim is a cultural worker who has been involved with the arts, culture and heritage sector for over 30 years. Her interests are in understanding and using arts, culture and heritage as agents to facilitate mindset change which can empower the individual to voice and become active in creating positive narratives of themselves and society as a whole. Her more recent work on cultural mapping has provided an opportunity to bring together all of her past experience as a means of creating a deeper understanding of the value that individuals have, and how as a collective small and large problems can be solved while also addressing issues of mental health. Sustainability requires constant and active engagement with all members of society. She is a member for Prestwich Place Project Committee, a resident volunteer at the District Six Museum in Cape Town, South Africa, and is committed to helping community members set projects, programmes and organizations to improve well-being in their communities.

Tiago Vinagre de Castro is a cultural manager, urbanist, and researcher. He holds a degree in Tourism Management and Planning (2006) and a master’s in Urban and Regional Planning (2012) from the University of Aveiro and a specialization in Management and Production of Shows from the University Lusófona of Porto (2007). In the past 15 years, he has been working mainly in the cultural sector as producer, manager, and creator within national and international projects. In 2012, he cofounded the NGO 4iS - Platform for Social Innovation where he develops urban transformation projects through culture and participation as well as projects that combine heritage and arts with community development. He was a researcher within the project “CREATOUR: Creative Tourism Destination Development in Small Cities and Rural Areas” and is a PhD student in Sociology - Cities and Urban Cultures with the research topic, “The role of cultural intermediaries in the dynamics of urban regeneration in small cities.”

Cláudia Pato de Carvalho is a Researcher at the Centre for Social Studies and Co-coordinator of the Cities, Cultures and Architecture research group at CES. Her research is presently focused on REDE ARTÉRIA (operation no. CENTRO-07-2114-FEDER-000022, Portugal 2020). REDE ARTÉRIA is an action-research project, coordinated by O Teatrão (a professional theatre company from Coimbra), that aims to develop a cultural programming network in the Centro region (Portugal) and the creation of artistic intervention projects in eight cities in the region. She completed her PhD in Sociology, with a specialization in Sociology of Culture, Knowledge and Communication, at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Coimbra, in collaboration with the Center for Reflective Community Practice (DUSP, MIT). Between 2010 and 2018, she established a European network in the field of arts education and disadvantaged communities, with several projects approved under the Youth in Action Program and ERASMUS+. She was a member of the coordinating CES research team of the project “CREATOUR: Creative Tourism Destination Development in Small Cities and Rural Areas.” She is also a member of the CES team of the H2020 project “UNCHARTED: Understanding, Capturing and Fostering the Societal Value of Culture” (2020-2023), coordinated by the University of Barcelona.

Caldas da Rainha is located in the Centro region of Portugal, 90 km north of Lisbon.

The Summer School will be held at:

SILOS Contentor Criativo
R. Filinto Elísio 42, Caldas da Rainha
GPS Coordinates: 39°24'08.5"N 9°08'19.0"W

HOW TO ARRIVE

By Car:
‘SILOS Contentor Criativo’ is installed since 2010 in the old grinding plant ‘Moagem CERES’ in the Caldas da Rainha city center. GPS: 39°24'08.5"N 9°08'19.0"W

By Plane:
The nearest airport to Caldas da Rainha is Lisbon Airport, about 90 km away.
Porto Airport is about 240 km from Caldas da Rainha.
From either airport you can take the bus or the train to Caldas da Rainha. The bus can be an easier and cheapest option, since not all train stations have a direct connection.

By Bus:

From Lisbon: take either the metro or a taxi from the airport to the Sete Rios bus terminal. At Sete Rios bus terminal, there are frequent Rede Expressos coach services to Caldas da Rainha which take about 1 hour (~9€ - tickets available for purchase at the bus station and online). The coach station in Caldas da Rainha (Terminal Rodoviário de Caldas da Rainha) is situated at the city centre.

From Porto: Take either the metro, taxi or shuttle from the airport to the Porto Bus Station (Campo 24 de Agosto). At the bus terminal, there are frequent Rede Expressos coach services to Caldas da Rainha which take about 4 hours (~19€ - tickets available for purchase at the bus station and online). The coach station in Caldas da Rainha (Terminal Rodoviário de Caldas da Rainha) is situated at the city centre.

Please check the schedules at Rede Expressos website: https://www.rede-expressos.pt/en/tickets

By Train:

From Lisbon: At Gare/Estação Oriente railway station there are trains to Caldas da Rainha from 6:38h until 17:38h. You will need to change station 2 different times. It takes about 2.30h a ride (~10€ - tickets only available for purchase at the station).

From Porto: At the Campanhã railway station there are trains to Caldas da Rainha from 6:45h until 17:40h. You will need to change station 1 time. The ride can take about 4h to 6h, depending on the trains (~20-23€ - tickets available for purchase at the station and online).

Please check the schedules at Comboios de Portugal website: https://www.cp.pt/passageiros/en.

Accommodation in Caldas da Rainha

Please note that accommodation is not included in the registration fee.
A special rate was made available for the participants of the summer school at the Campanile Caldas da Rainha Hotel:
Single or double/twin room, without breakfast: €41.00/night
Single room, with breakfast: €45.00/night
Double/twin room, with breakfast: €49.00/night

Campanile Caldas da Rainha Hotel
R. Fernando Ponte e Sousa 11
2500-200 Caldas da Rainha
GPS Coordinates: 39.39890865606337, -9.132812602837461

Please note that accommodation is not included in the registration fee and must be booked directly with the hotel. The summer school organizing committee is not responsible for hotel bookings and cancellations. To make your hotel reservation, please email the hotel directly at info@marianacalacabaptista.pt, making reference to the CES Summer School on “Cultural Mapping”.

Please note that these accommodation fees are only available during the time of earlybird registrations (until Friday, 18 February 2022).

Summer School cancellation policy

If you should have to cancel your registration, notification in writing should be sent to Inês Costa. Please make sure you state the name of the summer school in the subject line of your email.
• A refund of 75% of the full amount paid will be given for cancellations received until Friday, 18 February 2022.
• A refund of 40% of the full amount paid will be given for cancellations received between 19 February and 7 March 2022.
• No refund will be issued for cancellations received after 7 March 2022 nor failure to attend.