Overview

This is the first of a series of three International Creative Tourism Webinars in Spring 2021 within the umbrella of CREATOUR International. Conceived as “global conversations,” the webinars aim to create a platform for connecting creative tourism research and practice in a spirit of co-learning.

Each webinar will bring together practitioners and researchers, and feature guests from creative tourism and allied areas of practice. Following initial presentations (approx. 10 minutes each), we will be encouraging all participants to engage in an open discussion, aiming to foster a platform to discuss experiences, concerns, and various gaps in knowledge (and practice), especially during this uncertain time.

CREATOUR’s approach to creative tourism highlighted active participation, learning, creative self-expression, and community engagement, all underlined by an immersive connection to place. An image that immediately springs to mind is one of in-presence small-scale workshops and other creative activities – a mode that has been frozen during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Parallel with this, over the last while, we have witnessed the growth of numerous network-based companies and other organizations offering online art and craft training through recorded videos – yet the “human touch” of live interaction is often missing in these offers.

With these situations in mind, this session will focus on practices of adaptation between in-presence and online arts and cultural training and creative tourism that have been developed in the context of the pandemic, and trajectories forward from this point in time.

Invited speakers:

Geetika Agrawal | Vacation with An Artist (VAWAA), United States
Geetika Agrawal is Founder and CEO at Vacation with An Artist (VAWAA), the first curated platform to book immersive mini-apprenticeships with master artists and craftspeople around the world. Her mission is to unlock profound human experiences that promote curiosity, deepen human connections, and preserve time-honored wisdom. Prior to VAWAA, she was a Creative Director at R/GA and founder of the traveling dinner series Food For Thought. Her work has won several awards and has been featured in the New York Times, Travel + Leisure, VICE, Artsy, National Geographic and more.

Nancy Cottingham Powell | North Van Arts, North Vancouver, Canada
Nancy’s background is steeped in the arts, training as an actress then evolving into production during Vancouver’s Expo ’86. She has worked with a wide variety of arts and culture events and organizations, including MusicFest Vancouver, Pacific National Exhibition, and Vancouver Symphony. She supported visual artist Gordon Halloran, presenting nationally and internationally his unique ice painting installations, Paintings Below Zero. She helped found the Sechelt Arts Festival, a multi-disciplinary event on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia and is currently the executive director of North Van Arts. Nancy is passionate about utilizing innovation, collaboration, and diversity to build dynamic communities through the arts.

Oliver Peterson Gilbert | Goldsmiths, University of London, UK
Oliver’s research centres on the sociology of music and art, cultural policy, curatorial practice, and cultural history.  Prior to joining Goldsmiths, he was a Senior Arts Policy Advisor in the UK Government’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS). Oliver has also held posts at King’s College London, Birkbeck, University of London, University of Southampton, and the Open University, alongside various curatorial and research roles at Tate.  Oliver’s published research outputs have explored histories of British post-war artistic and musical communities, the digital mediation of live music, and a sequence of policy reports mapping the UK’s creative start-up ecosystem.

Organizing team:

Introduction: Nancy Duxbury  | Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra, Portugal
Nancy Duxbury is a senior researcher and co-coordinator of the “Cities, Cultures and Architecture” research group at the Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra. She is a member of the European Expert Network on Culture and investigates cultural mapping, culture in sustainable development, valuation of cultural participation, and culture-based development strategies in smaller communities. She was the principal investigator of the national research-and-application project “CREATOUR: Creative Tourism Destination Development in Small Cities and Rural Areas” (2016-2020).

Moderator: Fiona-Marie Hawes | Roots Guide / Wageningen University, Netherlands
Fiona Hawes is working towards an MSc in Tourism, Society and Environment at Wageningen University, with a strong focus on tourist experiences and sustainable development. She consults at a rural creative hub in Portugal, while supporting CREATOUR International. Fiona also holds a bachelor’s degree in Psychology/Business Psychology. She is a member of the Roots Guide project, designing an educational toolkit based on global citizenship and experimental travel activities. In collaboration with other researchers, Fiona has designed and facilitated workshops both online and offline to bring mindfulness, sense of place and storytelling into the classroom.

Community manager: Tiago Vinagre de Castro | Centre for Social Studies/Faculty of Economics, University of Coimbra, Portugal
Tiago Vinagre de Castro is a cultural manager, urbanist, and researcher. In the past 15 years, he has been working mainly in the cultural sector as a 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 and community development projects through culture and participation. He was integrated within the CES research team of the CREATOUR project (2016-2020). Currently, he is a PhD student in Sociology with the research project “INTERMEDIA - The role of cultural intermediaries in the dynamics of urban regeneration in small cities” and consultant in the project “CREATOUR AZORES.”

Technical manager: Sílvia Silva  | Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra, Portugal
Sílvia Silva is a member of the “Cities, Cultures and Architecture” research group at CES and since December 2020 she is one of the representatives of the Junior Researchers at the CES governing bodies. Currently, she is a researcher in the H2020 project “UNCHARTED: Understanding, Capturing and Fostering the Societal Value of Culture” (2020-2024). She was Research Manager in the project “CREATOUR: Creative Tourism Destination Development in Small Cities and Rural Areas” (2016-2020), directly collaborating with the research centres and different entities from public and private sectors, culture, tourism, and local development.

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Registration

This activity is carried out through the Zoom platform, with mandatory registration – up to March 30th. Participation is limited to the number of places available.

To register click HERE

The link to the session will be emailed to all registrants on March 31st.

Please keep the microphone muted until the discussion is open. The host may remove disruptive participants.

Open activities streamlined in digital format, such as this one, do not confer a declaration of participation.