Meng Qu (p), Kyungjae Jang, Takayoshi Yamamura

Timothy Wojan

The social and industrial restructuring of rural societies in countries of the global north, where globalization and urbanization have had a significant impact, is reintroducing tourism, rural development, and regional revitalization to the agenda. Japan, as the country with the most severe rural decline and a super-aging population, has been working on various plans to establish the country through the tourism business, especially in rural areas. Although experience-based rural creative tourism has been the major focus of development in the Japanese tourism industry, it has received much less attention in the academic literature on creative tourism than other nations. This study seeks to investigate two of the unique growing active forms of creative tourism in rural Japan: rural arts festival tourism and content tourism. Through case studies and research of various forms of rural art and content tourism over the past five years, this study demonstrates that both rural art and content tourism provide several benefits and social innovation to rural areas. Art tourism can cover the creative transformation from elite art to daily culture through broad civil involvement and tourism contact. The contents of tourism can also incorporate pop culture into similar everyday culture, so attracting a younger and broader audience. Beyond the sphere of creative tourism, they both help the process of social enterprise and territorial rehabilitation. Many of these benefits are indirectly provided to rural areas. Overall, art tourism and contents tourism can round out a more active sort of cultural tourism 3.0 with its rural enhancement and cultural creation missions. The findings have the potential to encourage and support the cultural and economic development of rural communities worldwide. This study also outlines several management concerns originating from this sort of creative tourism that require additional research and consideration.

Nancy Duxbury (p)

Meng Qu

The IN SITU project, “Place-based innovation of cultural and creative industries in non-urban areas,” is a four-year research project funded by the European Commission through the Horizon Europe programme (project no. 101061747, 2022-2026, https://insituculture.eu/). Involving 13 partners from 12 EU countries, as well as international outreach partners and advisors, IN SITU combines research and experimental actions to advance the innovation-related practices, capacities, and potential of cultural and creative industries (CCIs) based in non-urban areas of the EU. The project aims to advance understanding of the forms, processes, and governance needs of CCIs located in non-urban areas of Europe and to advance the ability of non-urban CCIs to act as drivers of innovation, competitiveness, and sustainability for the locales in which they are located. The core defining aspect of IN SITU is the interlinking of research and practice through place-based IN SITU Labs, hubs for networking, capacity building, and monitoring case studies in six non-urban regions across Europe, located in Portugal, Ireland, Iceland, Finland, Latvia, and Croatia.

The IN SITU project builds on multidisciplinary research relating to: processes of innovation of non-urban CCIs; CCIs in non-urban place-based development; CCI entrepreneurship and cross-sectoral collaboration; territorial innovation policy and smart development frameworks and their relation to CCIs in non-urban areas; and cultural planning and policy for non-urban areas. The project is also informed by a long-term process of Europe-wide open consultations and debates among non-urban cultural practitioners was jointly undertaken over recent years, led by four major European cultural networks. A detailed analysis of the concerns, needs, and aspirations of non-urban CCI practitioners across Europe as articulated through these collective works highlighted the need not only to focus on the CCI enterprises but also on the policy and planning contexts of the locales where they operate.

This presentation provides an overview of the objectives, structure, and methodologies of the IN SITU project, and how it is contextualized and informed by the perspectives, aspirations, and needs of non-urban CCI practitioners in Europe.

Milene Tessarin (p), Carolina Castaldi, Nicola Cortinovis, Ron Boschma

Nancy Duxbury

Innovation dynamics are crucial drivers for development, and as such, they have received significant attention from researchers and policymakers. The role of cultural and creative occupation has been recognised at various levels, such as growth, employment, and innovation. Several authors argue it plays an essential role in promoting innovation since cultural and creative workers encompass a wide range of professionals capable of producing a multitude of new products and services and providing ideas and new approaches to other activities. Additionally, while it is well documented that innovation and knowledge creation concentrate in cities, recent research has shown that non-urban and peripheral areas also engage in innovative activities. However, there is still a gap concerning regional studies and their contribution to innovative development at the sub-regional level. This article investigates how creative occupations across urban, intermediate, and peripheral regions affect innovation performance. In our empirical analysis, we will analyse 229 NUTS2 regions of the European Union in the period 2011-2020. As a measure of innovation, we will examine both trademarks, which better capture soft innovation, and patents, a commonly used measure associated with technological innovation. We obtained data from EUIPO trademarks and REGPAT patents. We employ the Eurostat classification for cultural and creative occupations as the main explanatory variable at ISCO 3 digits. Data will be evaluated for the period 2011-2020. Preliminary results show that cultural and creative occupations are positively associated with the number of trademarks per capita, especially in non-urban regions, including rural and intermediate regions (while there is no significant association with urban regions). In turn, cultural and creative occupations show a positive association with patents per capita in intermediate regions, while it is negative for rural regions. A greater female workforce participation in creative and cultural occupations is also positively associated with innovation in terms of trademarks per capita.

Simon McKerrell (p)

Milene Tessarin

This paper examines the relationship between place-based entrepreneurship of musical micro-enterprises and their economic sustainability, in rural CCIs in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. It summarises primary research from a research fellowship, drawing upon ethnographic evidence from over 70 interviews with musicians, venue operators, musical instrument makers, luthiers, festival organisers, arts promoters, public officials, charity officers, police, educators, tutors across the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.

Many interviews revealed (either directly or tacitly) a strong relationship between the sustainability of musical entrepreneurial activity in rural areas, and place-based enterprise and activity. This revealed itself in various ways including: strong place-based stories of music and song in the branding and online identities for musicians, venues, festivals and events; revenue from online music tuition for more place-based artists; more sustainable music festivals had stronger links to the local communities and heritage; through the deliberately place-based decision in festival programming, venue events and educational programmes across years; and a vibrant third sector that understands the importance of place and culture in sustaining their activities in rural Scotland.

The project also reveals the extent of ‘state retreat’ in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, barriers to participation for young people and various aspects of the impact of digitalization that emerged in musical careers during the pandemic, and how these have been variously capitalized for more sustainable incomes.

The discussion concludes by proposing four future rural music-CCI trends: 1) The different affordances of different musical genres for place-based marketing of musicians, festivals and events. Traditional music’s much stronger connection to the places and heritage of the Highlands and Islands constantly reveals and supports traditional musicians and organisations to remain more economically sustainable for rural music careers. 2) The concomitant deterritorialization of other genres such as rock, classical, pop or jazz, indie musics makes their communities of practice less visible and less sustainable in rural areas. 3) The substantial future opportunities for CCI music-entrepreneurs who understand and can mobilize the transfer of rural and cultural capital to economic capital through music and online marketing, festivals and events, with real-world economic benefits for new, rural careers in the creative economy. 4) Policy implications which could include tourist bedroom tax, collectivization of public liability insurances; Digital marketing collectives/hubs; tax rebates for rural creative industries; income tax exemptions/reductions for rural CCIs; audit and surveys to support third sector and entrepreneurial activity in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.

Timothy Wojan (p), Stephan Goetz, Zheng Tian, Luyi Han

Simon McKerrell

The study of grassroots innovation—the introduction of new products or processes not necessarily reliant on formal R&D or science and engineering inputs—has hugely benefited from the development of the Oslo Manual and data collected in the Community Innovation Survey (CIS). In contrast, the study of grassroots design—applying structured, creative processes to the usability or aesthetics of a product without input from professional designers—remains under investigated. If design comprises a mediation between people and technology, then the process by which the utility from new grassroots inventions is transformed into innovations valued in markets cannot be fully understood. This paper uses US data on the design orientation of respondents in the 2014 Rural Establishment Innovation Survey linked to longitudinal data on the same firms to examine the association between design, innovation, and employment and wage growth. Findings from the research will inform the value of adding questions to the CIS able to elicit the design orientation of firms. The focus on rural firms will also inform the EU-funded research project examining the contribution of creative and cultural industries to non-urban areas (IN SITU). From the US context, the research will inform questions to be investigated in the recently collected 2022 Annual Business Survey—the US peer survey to the CIS that also contains a Design module.