Overview

Book presentation by Alexandre Dias Pereira (Diretor da Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra), Rita Pais (Diretora Executiva do Centro de Estudos Sociais), Humberto Figueiredo [MosaicoLab (projeto-piloto CREATOUR)] and Mariana Calaça Batista [Caldas Creative Tourism (projeto-piloto CREATOUR)]

Overview

The book CREATOUR: Catalisando o turismo criativo em cidades de pequena dimensão e em áreas rurais [CREATOUR: Catalyzing creative tourism in small towns and rural areas], published by the University of Coimbra Press, results from the work carried out within the CREATOUR project. This research-and-application project involved five research centres and 40 organizations that designed and implemented creative tourism pilot projects in four regions of Portugal: Norte, Centro, Alentejo and Algarve. The CREATOUR project worked as a research and development phase, catalyzing a network of creative tourism promoters who worked on the design, planning, testing and implementation of creative tourism offers at the local level in small cities and rural areas across the country, while simultaneously connected at the national level.

Creative tourism has proven to be an inspiring perspective and direction for local culture-based development and cultural tourism in smaller places. It highlights and articulates the local, the vernacular and the specificities of particular places. The small-scale and interactive nature of activities encourages experimentation, flexibility, meaningful co-learning and creative exchanges between locals and visitors. The CREATOUR project encouraged experimental practices and pilot trials to more fully understand the issues and potential of creative tourism in small cities and rural contexts in Portugal. Interlinking culture, tourism and local development perspectives and methodologies, CREATOUR catalyzed, empowered and learned through an array of bottom-up development approaches and initiatives across the four regions.

This book presents the accomplishments, challenges and reflections on the CREATOUR project, with individual chapters detailing each of the 40 pilot projects. These chapters present the development journey and progress of each creative tourism project and the organization (or partnerships) that envisioned and propelled them, the difficulties encountered, the successes, an assessment of the journey so far, and aspirations and plans for the future. The process of elaborating the chapters, written jointly by researchers and professionals from different sectors, resulted in valuable experiences of co-learning and exchange of knowledge, giving rise to narratives which embody the unique flavour and specificity of each initiative.

The full book is available in open access format at: https://doi.org/10.14195/978-989-26-2183-8

An English-language translation of the Introduction chapter, “Activating creative tourism in small cities and rural areas in Portugal: The CREATOUR research-and-application approach,” is available at: http://creatour.pt/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/livro-creatour_Introducao-EN-21x27-Digital.pdf

In line with the philosophy of the project, highlighting the importance of individual places, their richness, and the specificities of each one, a presentation and discussion session will be held in each of the regions covered by the project (Norte, Centro, Alentejo and Algarve, with an additional session in Lisbon):

April 22: Algarve region (Loulé) presentation session (Palácio Gama Lobo, Loulé)
May 06: Lisbon region (Centro de Inovação da Mouraria, Lisboa)
May 17: Alentejo region (Casa do Barro em S. Pedro do Corval, Reguengos de Monsaraz)
May 21: North Region ( (Centro Cultural de Forjães, Esposende) 

For any additional information, contact: creatour@ces.uc.pt