The Potential of Cultural and Creative Tourism for Placemaking

Cultural tourism has traditionally been viewed as a means of attracting visitors to places with culture, so that they stimulate economic growth through passive consumption. New views of the relationship between culture, people and places are emerging that emphasise the potential for tourists, visitors, residents and other place users to actively collaborate in making places to improve the quality of life. This presentation will bring together examples of initiatives that harness the creative potential of mobile populations in shaping places.

This lecture was part of Ontario Culture Days symposium, Now, into the Future: Cultural Tourism in Ontario, held June 16-17, 2021.

Greg Richards,
Breda University and University of Tilburg
Greg Richards is Professor of Placemaking and Events at Breda University and Professor of Leisure Studies at the University of Tilburg in The Netherlands. He has worked on projects for numerous national governments, national tourism organisations and municipalities, and he has extensive experience in tourism and leisure research and education. His recent publications include the SAGE Handbook of New Urban Studies (with John Hannigan), Reinventing the Local in Tourism (with Paolo Russo), Small Cities with Big Dreams: Creative Placemaking and Branding Strategies (with Lian Duif) and Rethinking Cultural Tourism. He has been involved in the development and evaluation of a number of major event-led cultural regeneration programmes, including the European Capitals of Culture and the Hieronymus Bosch 500 anniversary programme. He has completed several major research projects on the relationship between culture and tourism, including reports for the OECD on the Impact of Culture on Tourism (2009) and Tourism and the Creative Economy (2014). He has also collaborated with the UNWTO on the report on Tourism and Culture Synergies (2108), and he is actively involved in the development of creative tourism initiatives in different parts of the world.

We acknowledge and thank the Province of Ontario and the Canada Council for the Arts for their support of this project.