A project enhancing local creative and cultural production to promote a sustainable tourism model based on blue innovation
YEAR
2023 – 2024
ROLE
Leading Partner
Production
Training
CATEGORY
Regeneration of places
2030 GOALS
Faro, Ancona and Lesvos are three Mediterranean coastal areas undergoing urbanistic, geographic and economic transformation. On the one hand, Ancona and Faro suffer from the consequences of what is commonly known as overtourism, i.e. the excessive presence of mass tourism in places unsuitable for hosting large crowds of people. On the other hand, Lesvos is at the centre of the phenomena of immigration, a process in which new temporary citizens are affecting change on the social and cultural characteristics of the place they inhabit. All of them are also maritime landscapes facing challenges like adversities of climate change, waterfront pollution, soil erosion, growth of endangered species.
Is it possible to promote the uniqueness of those regions, the beauty of their cultural heritage, and the biodiversity of their coastal and marine ecosystem, without encouraging the spread of consumptive tourist practices that are harmful to the environment and local communities? Is it possible to combine the visionary power of artists with the expertise of local cultural organisations to build a different narrative of the environmental and cultural identity of Faro, Lesvos and Ancona? And how can this voice be used by tourism industries to design more sustainable tourism models?
BlueTour project was conceived as an international partnership between a creative and cultural organisation, a non-profit organisation and a public administration, to build, together, a new approach to this challenge.
Arts and culture for a more sustainable tourism
We believe that the coastal heritage needs to be taken care of by both foreigners, tourists who should listen to the places they visit, leaving space for their voices to be heard, but also by local inhabitants and their economies, those that should embrace eco-friendly behaviour and sustainable production patterns that respect the places where they live in. To do so, artists, cultural operators, tourism industry, environmental sciences, policy makers and local communities, will work simultaneously in three Mediterranean coastal areas, to co-create and participate in socially-engaged and locally-embedded arts activities enhancing the blue heritage in a sustainable way.
Through this process local grassroots cultural practitioners and communities will build their capacity to become ambassadors for the preservation of their coastal habitat and raise awareness amongst tourists and local economy stakeholders in adopting sustainable development and consumption practices that support the blue economic growth of their coastal area.
Ancona, Lesvos and Faro for a co-designed methodology
The BLUETOUR project is based on the collaboration between three actors operating in geographically similar areas: Ancona, Faro and Lesvos. Respectively, it involves the cultural organisation Sineglossa, headquartered in Ancona (Italy), which has a series of long-standing projects dealing with the culture based regeneration in the urban and coastal region of Conero National Park; LATRA, a social enterprise based in Lesvos (Greece), and the Municipality of Faro (Portugal).
LATRA is a socially-engaged organisation based in Lesvos-Greece, responding to the most pressing social, political, economic and cultural concerns and expectations of European citizens by conducting state-of- the-art research and innovation at the frontlines of 21st Century European societal challenges. LATRA ensures that all citizens including those from geographically remote, socio-economically disadvantaged and minority communities are equitably included in all aspects of European society ranging from education to economy and governance. LATRA’s vision is to BUILD THE WORLD BETTER, by empowering marginalized communities to address the adversities they face, and to become not just actors in their lives but directors of their resilient future, creating communities which are inclusive, adaptive and resilient. https://latra.gr/
The Municipality of Faro is the administrative capital of the Algarve, a region in the south of Portugal with approximately 65,000 inhabitants in an area that is 30% part of the Ria Formosa Nature Reserve. The municipality of Faro, with a millennial history since Roman times, is today one of the most important urban centres in the south of the Iberian Peninsula, with an airport that already receives more than 5,000,000 tourists; an internationally recognised University for the Faculties of Marine Sciences, Tourism Management and Biotechnology.
BlueTour activities
The project combines the strengths of participatory co-design methodologies developed by each partner to produce tourist maps that travelers can use to embrace the authentic soul of places. Those participatory processes involve policy makers, cultural practitioners, artists, tour operators and local communities of the three coastal areas. Moreover, a capacity-building process addressed to artists and local operators, led by Sineglossa and based on the methodology of NONTURISMO community written guides, enables the co-creation between artist and local communities of new artistic productions aimed at enhancing the blue marine heritage.
- DESIGN AND CAPACITY BUILDING ON THE BLUETOUR METHODOLOGY
National and transnational focus groups to co-design the methodology.
Results of this activity are the BlueTour guidelines based on which Sineglossa led a capacity building workshop aimed at artists and cultural practitioners.
April – October 2023
Faro, Lesvos and Ancona - LOCAL COMMUNITY MEETINGS TO ENGAGE INHABITANTS
November – December 2023
Faro, Lesvos and Ancona - BLUETOUR ARTISTIC RESIDENCY
April – May 2024
Lesvos, Greece - SHOWCASE OF BLUETOUR ARTWORKS
September – November 2024
Faro, Ancona, Lesvos - HANDBOOK DEVELOPMENT
June – October 2024
Faro, Ancona, Lesvos - WORKSHOP FOR ARTISTS AND TOURISM OPERATORS ON BLUETOUR METHODOLOGY
October – November 2024
Faro, Ancona, Lesvos - BLUETOUR FINAL CONFERENCE
December 2024
Faro
BlueTour artists
André Silva Sancho is the artist selected by GAMA RAMA Gallery in Faro (Portugal). He was born in Faro on July 20, 1993. From an early age showed a special interest in drawing and visual arts. However, he only started studying Art in 2008 at Tomás Cabreira school, finishing his visual arts course three years later. He enrolled in Design at the Institute of Visual Arts, Design and Marketing (IADE) in Lisbon, where he studied for only one academic year. In 2012, he joined the Product Design course – ceramics and glass – at the School of Arts and Design of Caldas da Rainha (ESAD.CR). He finished his degree as an Erasmus student in Italy, at the Free University of Bolzano – UNIBZ – where he developed his final project: BLOWPLASTIC (2020). With this project he got the interest of Galeria Rossana Orlandi, Milan, where he was part of the FUORISALONE 2020 circuit. He also participated in the exhibition 1000 Vases – Galerie Joseph, Paris in October 2020. He produced one of the three trophies of the MONSTRA Animation Festival, in Lisbon, in 2019. Wins the ‘’Caldas Cidade Bordallo‘’ contest, with the ‘Sardinhas Bordallo Pinheiro 2019’ project, permanently applied at the La Vie shopping center, in Caldas da Rainha.
Paolo Lolicata is the artist selected by LATRA in Lesvos. Artist and curator, he works with an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural philosophy aimed at challenging preconceptions about identity. His work emphasizes the fragmentation, coexistence, and variability of elements inherent in human existence. In his practice, different mediums are used to generate inner landscapes where elements of different matter and levels of materiality meet to create multilayered conversations. This process is strongly linked with Paolo’s personal journey and sense of identity. Born in Sicily, where elements of Mediterranean cultures collide and fuse to generate an unclear sense of unity, he is naturalized Australian. Lately, he has been researching and developing work in Lesvos and Lisbon, where he recently developed “Obrigadissimo,” supported by Culture Moves Europe, unfolding contemporary perceptions and necessities around Liberation, a tribute to the shared celebration between Italy and Portugal of the 25th of April.
Find out more
Read the results of three focus groups held in Ancona, Lesvos, and Faro with citizens, cultural workers, and tourism professionals to investigate obstacles and possible solutions for implementing a cultural tourism model.
Read the article on the capacity-building workshop Sineglossa held in Ancona with cultural practitioners from Lesvos and Faro.
Credits
BlueTour is led by Sineglossa, in collaboration with LATRA (Greece), Municipio de Faro (Portugal), in association with Iliaktida (Greece), Universidade do Algarve (Portugal), Região de Turismo do Algarve (Portugal). The project is co-funded by the Creative Europe programme.
This project has been co-funded by the European Union’s Creative Europe programme under grant agreement No 101100189. Views and opinions expressed on this page are those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) can be held responsible for them.
