Creative tourism is a relatively new field of research with most attention directed to creative tourism activities in large cities. Little research has been conducted on creative tourism development strategies in extra-metropolitan contexts. The CREATOUR project aimed to improve understanding of the processes (under different conditions and situations) through which creative tourism activities can be developed, implemented, and made sustainable. This article reports on a national analysis of approaches developed by the project’s participating organizations to offer creative tourism initiatives. At an organizational level, we found five main models: Stand-alone offers, repeated; series of creative activities and other initiatives under a common theme; localized networks for creative tourism; small-scale festivals that include creative tourism activities; and creative accommodations. At a broader community level, creative tourism initiatives can inspire new ideas and avenues of activity and contribute to cultural vitality and potential regeneration dynamics through reinforcing distinctive elements of local identity, instigating flows and connections between the locale and the external, and serving as platforms for local collaboration, exchange, and development. In the time of COVID-19, enhancing connections with other organizations locally and regionally can contribute to wider initiatives and the development of community-based regeneration strategies.

In the Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the United Nations in 2015, the role of culture is limited. We argue that culture’s absence is rooted in the longue durée of interplay among theoretical and policy debates on culture in sustainable development and on cultural policy since the mid-twentieth century. In response to variations in concepts and frameworks used in advocacy, policy, and academia, we propose four roles cultural policy can play towards sustainable development: first, to safeguard and sustain cultural practices and rights; second, to ‘green’ the operations and impacts of cultural organizations and industries; third, to raise awareness and catalyse actions about sustainability and climate change; and fourth, to foster ‘ecological citizenship’. The challenge for cultural policy is to help forge and guide actions along these co-existing and overlapping strategic paths towards sustainable development.

Purpose: Given limited research about how artisans become integrated into tourism, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the emergence of artisan entrepreneur–mediators who link artisans to tourism in rural areas and small cities in Portugal. Using social embeddedness as a conceptual framework, this paper views artisan entrepreneur–mediators as existing within an entrepreneurial ecosystem. The paper investigates their role within this ecosystem and how social networks influence the artisan entrepreneur–mediators’ roles in connecting artisans to creative tourism. Design/methodology/approach: The paper is based on new (2017 and 2018) empirical evidence developed through two rounds of semi-structured interviews of five artisan entrepreneur–mediators. Findings: This paper finds that artisan entrepreneur–mediators in rural areas or small cities take on multiple roles as networking agents who organize and offer creative tourism experiences, providing the missing link between artisans and tourists. An analysis of the nuances of the operations of these artisan entrepreneur–mediators suggests that high levels of social embeddedness within local rural communities are important in order for these neo-rural entrepreneurs to attain their goals. Originality/value: Originality lies in the identification of a gap in artisan entrepreneurship literature in a rural context. It is the first time that a critical analysis of artisan entrepreneur–mediators who facilitate the link between artisans and tourism is carried out in terms of social embeddedness, their roles and connections to creative tourism, and types of community engagement.

This article reports on the themes and trajectories of a multidisciplinary and international literature. It reveals how cultural and creative work in rural and remote areas has largely been examined and articulated through three storylines: (1) cultural vitality, that is, culture as a resource for community development; (2) the ‘rural creative class’, recently linked to rural innovation; and (3) rural creative economies and creative entrepreneurship in rural and remote areas. Over the past decade, these strands of discourse have become more intertwined in policy and planning documents, suggesting an opportunity for converging these discussions into a more comprehensive approach to fostering cultural and creative work in rural and remote areas. However, cultural policy directed to rural areas remains underdeveloped compared to its urban counterpart.

Background  In 1994, the region of Emilia‐Romagna recognized the importance of citizens’ participation in the regional health‐care system and recommended the institution of Mixed Advisory Committees in the health districts and hospitals with the objective of monitoring and assessing health‐care quality from the users’ perspective.Design  This paper reports findings from a qualitatively based evaluation involving direct observations of the committees and 39 semi‐structured interviews: 20 with representatives of patients and users’ associations and 19 with health professionals and managers involved in the activities of the committees.Results  The Mixed Advisory Committees introduced for the first time in the Italian health system an ongoing deliberative approach that gave patients and users’ representatives the opportunity to be involved in health service governance. The committees enabled the creation of a method of collective participation that overcame the reductive individualistic ‘approach’ to health‐care participation. MAC participants evaluated the committees positively for their mixed composition, which integrated different cultures, experiences and professional profiles with the potential to contribute to solving health‐care problems, in a consultative role. Although patients and users’ representatives were able to exert some form of influence, their expectations were greater than the results obtained. The study illuminated some weak points of public consultation, such as a decline in participation by citizen representatives and a weak influence on decision making.Discussion and conclusions  MACs developed a mechanism of participation that provides health‐care users’ representatives with the opportunity to contribute to the identification and analysis of critical points of the health‐care system. A strength of the MACs is their level of institutionalization within the health system in the region of Emilia‐Romagna. However, they contain a problem of representativeness, lacking a formal system of determining a representative composition from among patients and users’ associations. The case study also illustrates that participation without the cooperation of the health service, and financial and organizational support, will result in a decline in citizen participation, given the resources required of these volunteer citizens in return for limited results.

This opening chapter provides an overview of the evolving and diversifying world of creative tourism and its research trajectories, discusses the changing contexts for research in this field, and introduces the chapters in this volume. The volume brings together 30 authors working within and researching creative tourism from different disciplinary perspectives and different origins. Many of these chapters also make strong links between theory and practice. Each chapter provides a window on current investigations in creative tourism, illustrating the variety of research interests, approaches, and national contexts informing and influencing the development of the field. Taken together, these cases encapsulate the growing diversity and scope of creative tourism and the expanding body of literature on this topic. From these varied perspectives, the editors asked each author to suggest future research streams to extend the conceptual questions and pragmatic issues with which they are engaged. In the closing chapter of the book, the editors synthesize these suggestions and advice to outline the perceived research gaps and to elaborate key thematic areas for investigation to advance creative tourism research.