Tourism, Creativity and Creative Industries Greg Richards Tilburg University/NHTV Paper presented at the conference Creativity and

Creative Industries in Challenging Times, NHTV Breda, November 2012

Abstract

Creativity has become increasingly important for the development of tourism in cities in recent years. As competition between cities grows, they increasingly seek to distinguish themselves through creative city and creative industries strategies. In the field of tourism, however, such strategies may arguably be counter-productive, as the race to produce distinction often results in cities adopting similar creative development models. In particular, many cities rely on the ideas of creativity gurus such as Richard Florida and Charles Landry to provide creative solutions to a wide range of cultural, social and economic problems. However, by following such exogenous prescriptions, adopting forms of fast policy and copying ideas from other creative cities, resulting in serial reproduction, unattractive to the vary tourists cities seek to attract. This paper examines the search for distinction through creativity, and analyses the development of different forms of creative tourism. It argues that the shift away from tangible to intangible competitive advantage is continuing, with a trend towards relational forms of tourism based on creativity and embedded knowledge.

Introduction

With the growth of the network society and the knowledge economy debates have intensified about the role of creativity and innovation in cities. Recent discourses on the renaissance of cities has given a specific role to creativity as stimulus for innovation, urban regeneration and renewal and placed it at the heart of discourses about the contemporary network or knowledge society (Frey, 2009; Brenholdt and Haldrup, 2006). Growing inter-urban competition in a globalising world increasingly forces cities to be creative in their attempts to distinguish themselves in a crowded tourism marketplace. One tool that has been increasingly utilised in this struggle is creativity, an asset or quality of places that is supposedly particularly important for cities. Cities are nodes of knowledge creation and circulation, of cultural and creative production and the main centres that attract the creative class. This paper examines the ways in which cities have used creativity and the creative industries to develop tourism and the role that tourism has played in developing creativity in the city. The changing context of creativity In thinking about the future of American cities, Business Insider recently selected 15 top future cities, based, among other things on how "cool" the city is --an important factor in attracting the young, creative types who will make the city hot. Hot cities are cool, seems to be the implication. The top hotspots are very far from the classic cultural capitals that now attract large numbers of visitors and which boast a high quality of life. They include Brooklyn, which is a hipster-friendly borough attracts young chefs, artists, entrepreneurs, families, and more, who have opened hip farm-to-table restaurants, cool art galleries and boutiques, and hipster markets, Philadelphia, where low housing prices, affordable lifestyle, and cool arts scene are attracting young people and hipster haven and Pittsburgh with its thriving student population, emerging arts and hip-hop scene, and fast-growing job market. The idea that bohemian cool is becoming a major driver for urb an economies echoes Floridas (2002) ideas that creativity is an essential asset for contemporary cities, particularly if they want to attract the creative class. Such ideas are also permeating into the field of tourism, not only because creativity has become an important element of tourism experiences in cities, but also because creativity is seen as one potential solution to problems of commodification and serial reproduction, both of which seem particularly prevalent in cities. Creativity has therefore been used in a number of ways in tourism, including Tourism products and experiences Revitalisation of existing products Valorizing cultural and creative assets Providing economic spin-offs for creative development

Using creative techniques to enhance the tourism experience Creating buzz and atmosphere

This paper examines the growing integration between tourism and creativity in an attempt to identify tendencies and trajectories of change. It looks at the way in which different forms of creativity have been developed for tourism in cities, and how cultural tourism has been in a number of places transformed into creative tourism. However, this very change raises the question whether creativity is central to the experiences sought by creative tourists, or whether the creative content is actually fulfilling different needs. From cultural tourism to creative tourism Cultural tourism has arguably been one of the major growth markets in global tourism in recent decades (Richards, 1996; OECD 2009). The growing desire for cultural experiences on holiday has been driven by rising education levels, the subsequent growth of cultural capital and simply by the expansion of tourism itself, which has brought larger numbers of people into contact with other cultures. The early expansion of modern cultural tourism was served by a growth in the cultural industries new monuments, museums, art galleries, theatres and heritage centres that provided relatively static interpretations of culture for visitors. During the 1980s and the 1990s the supply of culture increased at a faster rate than demand, spurred on by place competition and the need for nations, cities and regions to put themselves on the tourist map. Increased cultural supply met a concurrent growth in tourism demand in general, and a specific urge to seek out new experiences in cities and regions around the world. There was a growing interest in cities as tourist destinations, epitomised by the tourist boom in cities like Barcelona during the 1990s. The transformation of cultural tourism into a mass market changed the relationship between cultural tourists and cities. Whereas the cities of Italy had been the prize sought by the classic Grand Tourists in the 18 and 19 centuries (Towner, 1985), the new mass cultural tourism was based on a more superficial consumption of culture, in which atmosphere and image became more important than cultural substance or the contents of museums. This trend was also redolent of the general growth of the symbolic economy, and cultural institutions played an important part in stimulating the formation of urban regimes favourable to the development of the symbolic space of the cultural sector in cities (Zukin, 1995). The growing profile of culture in cities was also supported by a more instrumental view of culture, particularly in the social democracies of Western Europe. Culture was increasingly seen as a potential solution for a range of urban problems, such as lack of social cohesion, unemployment, poor education and physical dereliction. At the same time the nature of the cultural industries was also changing with the advent of digital culture, which made sectors such as media and information technology much more important. These were identified in the UK as the creative industries by the
th th

DCMS, which emphasised several newly expanding fields as being future leading sectors of the economy, such as design, fashion, advertising, music and cultural heritage. Initially the creative industries strategies developing in the UK and elsewhere were very productiondriven, assuming that stimulating a conducive climate for creative enterprises would stimulate growth. However, it rapidly became apparent that in many cities the growth of the creative industries was not just a supply-related issue, but also intimately linked to consumer demand for creative products and the presence of a critical infrastructure. Without a critical mass of hip, trendy consumers, it was difficult to stimulate the creative buzz required for the creative industries to flourish. This realisation was underpinned by two emerging models of creative development: firstly the creative cities model developed by Comedia in the early 1990s (Landry and Bianchini, 1995) and the creative class concept introduced by Florida (2002). Although both the creative city and the creative class models have been subject to considerable criticism, they do seem to reflect a basic reality: cities with a creative buzz or atmosphere are more attractive to live in, work in, and to visit. Empirical testing of Floridas basic model (Rutten and Gelissen, 2008) seems to suggest that there is a positive relationship between the creativity indicators Talent, Technology, Diversity and economic growth, as suggested by Florida. This has had an impact not just on the residents of successful creative places, but it has also made them more attractive for tourism. Cities such as Barcelona, Milan, Glasgow and Montreal all seem to have enjoyed a significant growth in tourism thanks at least in part to their status as creative hubs. One of the ironies of the growth of cultural tourism in such cities has been that the search for distinction by the cultural tourist has led them to consume similar experiences to many other people, and similarly, the search by cities for a distinctive image to sell to tourists has led them to duplicate similar experiences. The result has been an increase in the serial reproduction of culture (Richards and Wilson, 2006) and the onset of a vicious cycle of decline in leading cultural destinations (Russo, 2002). Faced with this massification of cultural consumption, many tourists have sought refuge in less tangible forms of cultural consumption that require even higher levels of cultural capital and competence to master. Rather than passively visit the main attractions in a city, many tourists are now actively seeking out alternative forms of tourism in new areas of the city, away from the their fellow tourist hoards (Maitland, 2007). In many cases these new tourists areas are found on the fringes of the inner city, where there is an edgy atmosphere and safe danger (Hann igan, 1998). Such areas are now instantly recognisable in the gentrifying areas of New York (Zukin, 2010), London (Pappalapore et al., 2010), Sydney (Collins and Kunz, 2007) and Barcelona (Russo and Quagliari, 2012). In these new hubs of creative consumption, tourists form a ready market for products related to creative tourism (Richards and Raymond, 2000), which can broadly be defined as the (co -)creation of creative experiences with tourists. In rural areas this has often taken the form of more or less formalised workshops teaching tourists specific skills, such as cookery, pottery, weaving or painting (e.g Raymond, 2007).

In cities, however, a much more eclectic creative tourism economy has emerged, embracing a diverse range of experiences and business models. This relates at least in part to the fact that tourists visit cities as much for the creative atmosphere or backdrop as they do for the creative activities themselves. Very often, urban creative tourism will develop through the provision of tasters, which offer a compressed version of local creativity, such as the morning gastronomic experience, typically involving buying food at the local market and cooking it for lunch. The important thing for destinations, as noted by Richards and Raymond (2000) is that the creativity involved in tourism should be embedded in the destination in some way. Otherwise it is very difficult for destinations to benefit directly from highly mobile flows of creativity, creative ideas and creative people. Creative tourism as embedded knowledge As Scott has argued, the cultural industries are more than just an economic phenomenon; they form part of a social system or cultural field which incorporates a wide range of actors and institutions. Creativity is an important input into the cultural field and the specific cultural scenes that have developed in cities. The social dimension of creativity is strengthened by the fact that value, in terms of creativity, is socially determined within networks. As Potts et al (2008) argue: The very act of consumer choice in creative industries is governed not just by the set of incentives described by conventional consumer demand theory, but by the choices of others..... The CIs, then, are properly defined in terms of a class of economic choice theory in which the predominant fact is that, because of inherent novelty and uncertainty, decisions to both produce and consume are largely determined by the choice of others in a social network. (4). Creativity and the creative industries are therefore embedded in particular social networks and therefore in specific places. This explains on the one hand why the formation of specific physical clusters have become so important in the creative industries, and also why, on the other hand, people use such spaces to gather, transfer and exchange creative knowledge. Spatial clusters, and also the temporal creative clusters constituted by certain field configuring events (Lange 2012) therefore become important nodes in creative networks, and particular actors become important switchers, linking different networks together. The embedding of creativity has important implications for tourism, since the experience of certain aspects of the creative economy, and the exchange of knowledge related to the creative industries, is tied to certain places. This creates a flow of people to such creative hubs, either as part of their work, or else as part of work-leisure mix, in which tourism consumption becomes a means of increasing cultural and creative capital. The challenge for places around the world is to find ways of effectively embedding mobile forms of creativity and convincing (potential) creative tourists that they are the place to be.

Developing creativity in urban tourism It is clear that the current urban models of creative tourism differ from the original concept outlined by Richards and Raymond (2000). Although there are a number of programmes which offer serious creative learning, very often the basic premise is not a formalised workshop or a significant transfer of skills or knowledge, but rather an introduction to the creativity embedded in a specific culture. In other words, what creative tourists often consume is local lifestyle. Not the elements of lifestyle that have previously been reproduced in circuits of cultural tourism (basically high culture), but rather embedded culture, or everyday life. The mechanisms through which creativity and the creative industries are articulated with tourism have developed rapidly in recent years, fuelled by creative development strategies, the growth of the media and Internet and the growth of creative scenes and events in both cities and rural areas. We can see the emergence of features such as: Creative spaces The development of cultural and creative clusters has been a major feature of culture-led urban regeneration strategies, and the emergence of creative hotspots is also being noted in rural areas as well (Scott, 2010). These developments are often linked to a creative industries rationale, aiming to bring creative producers together to create knowledge spillovers and increase innovation and economic growth. However, recent analyses have underlined the fact that successful clusters usually rely on a combination of creative production and the presence of consumers who can underpin the local creative economy through their consumption of creative experiences, atmosphere and buzz. These creative spaces are therefore developing a mixed economy in which the co-creation of experiences is central (Binkhorst and den Dekker, 2009; den Dekker and Tabbers, 2012). Tourists provide a means of establishing the global credentials of such spaces and linking the localised space of places to the global space of flows (Castells, 2009). Creative events Events are increasingly used as a means of achieving a host of developmental objectives in places around the world (Richards and Palmer, 2010). In the past, a lot of attention was paid to the role of events as catalysts for physical development, regeneration or image change. However, the development of the network society and the knowledge economy has shed additional light on the role of events as nodes in information and knowledge networks. Events act as a catalyst that can bring actors together to focus on particular issues. Such field configuring events (Lange, 2012) have an important role in synchronising policy agendas and establishing the legitimacy of particular discourses which have an influence far beyond the spatial and temporal confines of the event itself. Events not only attract tourists, but they also provide a creative space in which interaction can take place between mobile and static populations, developing relationships that help to anchor and legitimise the creativity associated with the event and its location.

Creative relationships The encounters produced by creative events and creative clusters have an important role in the circulation of knowledge and the maintenance of creative networks. Very often people will travel to specific places because they already know people who live or work there. In research on cultural tourism in Barcelona, for example, we found that over a third of tourists visiting the city had local contacts there. These local gatekeepers play an important role in introducing visitors to the cultural and creative life of the city, opening up the local spaces in which everyday creativity is performed (Crespi-Vallbona and Richards, 2007). This process of exposing and valorizing local creativity is an important part of the legitimation of the creative status of places. This is arguably one reason why cities such as Barcelona, which has attracted growing streams of creative visitors, has such a high status in international creative circuits (Rovira, 2010). Creative networks The development of creative relationships is increasingly being mediated by networks consciously established to support creative tourism. Following the establishment of the first such network by Creative Tourism New Zealand in 2003, there has been a rapid expansion of such initiatives to places such as Barcelona, Sitges, Santa Fe, Paris, Rome, Galicia, Austria and Thailand. These networks usually function as a loose association of actors with an interest in creative tourism and the creative industries, such as artists, cultural institutions, tourist boards, tourism providers and local authorities. The networks develop a range of creative activities that can be offered directly to tourists, either in the form of courses or taster experiences, or they act as brokers for creative contacts between creative producers and local artists and cultural institutions. The different actors in these creative networks are not formally organised, but very often constitute what den Dekker and Tabbers (2012) describe as creative crowds, or people who coagulate into a creative scene around the nodes in creative networks. Most of these people work in the creative industries, but the function of the creative crowd is not just related to productive work, but also crucially to the informal generation of knowledge, cultural capital and networking organisations that supports the creative economy. It is important to recognise that standard analyses of the creative industries in a particular location will not reveal the presence or function of these ad hoc creative crowds, or the way in which these creative crowds interact with tourists. Yet there are indications that such informal combinations of work, leisure and creativity are becoming increasingly important in the production of (creative) tourism. For example, the growth of couchsurfing, airbandb and other informalised, internet-based accommodation are enabling visitors to contact and interact with creative actors in the destination in new ways. Artists become accommodation providers and architects and designers become guides to their cities. There is a growing number of networks that provide access to these informal creative opportunities, such as Gidsy in Amsterdam and Berlin and Mycreativetour.com in cities around the world.

Developing creative opportunities for tourism All of these different forms of creative tourism development and marketing provide opportunities for the creative industries. Making use of these opportunities, however, requires creativity in itself. Visibility In the virtual world in which most tourism products are now traded, making creative tourism products visible is the biggest challenge. How can small-scale producers of creative experiences make their voices heard in an increasingly crowded marketplace? As Richards (2012) describes, attracting attention requires a keen understanding of the dynamics of the contemporary network society. In particular, there is a key role for what Castells describes as switchers who link different networks together. This is vital in creative tourism because the touris m and creative sectors have different agendas and speak different languages. Interestingly, the switchers are found more often in the creative sector than in tourism. This is because creative actors often have a greater need to extend their economic capital by developing new skills in cross-sectoral operation and applying their creative capital to new ventures. Permeability Although creative actors can often be found operating in tourism, the creative industries themselves remain difficult to penetrate for tourists. This is because creative work often takes place in the closed spaces of the workshop, the atelier or the office. Although the performing arts provide an important front stage for creativity, other areas such as design, architecture and advertising remain relatively difficult to access. Even the performing arts are only usually accessible through performances, which limits the time available for tourists to access the creative process. This problem is clear in creative clusters, where access to creativity is often limited to consuming the buzz of informal creative meeting spaces such as cafes and restaurants rather than the creative production process itself (Hitters and Richards, 2002). In some places the rise of what Richards (2010) has termed plug and play communities or what Russo and Quagliari (2012) refer to as post-bohemian districts is facilitating the penetration of tourists into creative networks. The facilities and contacts that allow people to rapidly adapt to the local community also open up creative opportunities for visitors. For example Creative Tourism Barcelona has been linking together locals and visitors in many different creative activities, including participating as castellers. Arguably, higher levels of permeability are an advantage enjoyed by smaller cities: the easier a creative environment can be approached and infiltrated, the more attractive this city is for the contemporary tourist. In this case, small and medium sized cities have a competitive advantage over their bigger brothers, which are more attractive because of (creative) touristic products such as leading museums, cool clubbing areas and famous

festivals. In the small and medium sized cities, the creative class is easier to pinpoint and easily approachable. (den Dekker and Tabbers, 2012: 130). Flexibility Creative tourism requires new types of creativity from the creative community. Instead of applying creativity to their specific discipline, those wishing to develop links with creative tourists have to develop skills in communication, knowledge transfer and co-creation. In particular, creative tourism providers need to recognise that the development of creative skills desired by the tourist needs to take place through a process of negotiation in which the embedded knowledge of the creative host is matched with and related to the creative skills of the visitor. This underlines the fact that creative tourism, as Wurzburger et al (2009) suggest, is a conversation, not a monologue. As Sennett (2010) suggests, creating a suitable conversation around creative tourism requires a dialogic process of collaboration between host and guest, and this means they both have to be flexible in their approach to each other and to the subject of creativity. Conclusion Tourism provides a host of opportunities for the creative industries, and the creative industries can be an effective conduit for tourism. However, capitalising effectively on these opportunities is not always easy. In particular Raymond (2007) has underlined the dangers of simple (and simplistic) models of creative tourism development, particularly in terms of developing effective business models. A particular problem seems to be that creative tourism development sometimes falls into the same trap as cultural tourism development often did in the past, namely the tendency to assume that having culture, or being creative, is sufficient to attract tourists. The problem is that the reasons for the success of cultural or creative tourism destinations are often mis-read or overlooked. In the case of cities such as Barcelona or Bilbao, for example, tourism growth is often linked to the presence of particular tangible assets, such as monuments, museums, beaches or an attractive climate. While these factors clearly help to attract tourists, focussing on tangible assets ignores the very important intangible factors, such as planning, knowledge development and networking, which are necessary to support the cultural or creative tourism system. The fact is that such developments are usually far from easy. It requires attention for the different elements of the creative system, such as the spaces and events that support the networks needed to embed creativity and make links to creative consumers and producers outside the destination. Creative tourism also requires careful design, which takes into account the need for elements such as visibility, permeability and flexibility. Without such a design approach it is unlikely that places will be able to develop the potential of the creative industries to attract creative to its full potential. It is even less likely that these places will be able to fully exploit the broader benefits of creative tourism development, such as networking, knowledge development and social capital building.

References

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