Peter Wiltshier[1]
Abstract
In an environment of deregulated tourism management, with plenty of vigorous competition, the dialogues of actor-networks (Latour, 2004) become critical for the analysis of the success of many key stakeholders working harmoniously in the community. These key people have tasked themselves with creating, defining, interpreting and reinterpreting the need to move forward with planned destination design as an agreed start-point (Senge, 1991, provides a blueprint for example). This dialogue has been constructed from various conceptual starting points often discussed in both tourism management and tourism studies. Worldviews now emerge that inform the post-industrial and post-structural landscapes of developed communities intent on becoming tourist destinations in Britain in the twenty-first century. Our current thinking and worldviews are based upon a shared and integrated approach using available community-led intellectual capacity that energises, inspires and motivates the community. This worldview expresses the best-fit for the landscape employing an extracted vision developed by and for the community’s constituent networks. These networks are endogenously created wherever possible and complemented by a well-embedded identity, values and beliefs having informed the vision that arises. This UK story is a narrative account of a benchmark exercise case study that has been based upon three core elements. The first of these elements is a very grateful public sector, under pressure to devolve costs to the private sector through competitive public funding processes. This is connected to a community-focused university which prides itself on work-related and problem-based learning and research. The third ingredient is a series of community-interest companies established by enterprising volunteers with an eye to community development and heritage and cultural conservation intended for the majority.
Keywords: community, design, innovation, tourism, enterprise, heritage, worldview
- Introduction
There are many lenses and discourses that admirably lend themselves to discussions and explorations of empowered communities dealing with development issues with resources obtained both inside the community and from the experiences of other antecedent case studies. Such discourses are actor-networks where specific goals are sought within a community and specific people are activated to engage tasks (see for example, Thomas, 2012; Bramwell, 2006; Sandstrom et al., 2014). A further relevant discourse is relational where specific projects engaged in with community development as key have been evaluated (examples from within Europe are available in Saxena, 2005; Orellana et al., 2012; Van Riper and Kyle, 2014; Dredge and Jamal, 2015). A critical discourse surrounds the concept of devolved responsibility, empowerment and endogeny; community champions promote and consider actions taken in disseminating good practices from the proverbial grassroots level (examples Flaccavento, 2016; Haukeland, 2011).
This paper explores and evaluates the participation by academic teams, from both staff and student perspectives, in destination development study in our Derbyshire community over the past decade. It amalgamates perspectives from staff and partner organisations with an assessment of the extent to which the University has played an important role in enlivening the concept of empowered destination development through the tourism industry. The reflective perspective employed by this evaluation has purposefully engaged staff and students in the deliberate exercise to ensure that the community is indeed perceived by many as a ‘destination of distinction’ (Della Corte and Del Gaudio,2015). This destination is the first and most visited National Park in the United Kingdom, the Peak District National Park, located in the geographical heart of the country and forming a green and important recreational oasis for many large industrial cities located in close proximity to the Park. As a distinctive destination, and often termed as the green lungs of the Midlands, the community comprises some 100,000 inhabitants and extends over 650 square miles of protected land (Ryan et al., 1998).
Actor-network theory is coupled to a reflexive practitioner perspective and worldview. We have indeed deliberately focused on our own views and relevant discourses to sieve out what were identified as the critical incidents and actions that have placed the University at the heart of community development and at the heart of appropriate plans devolved by national policy to the community over the past decade.
The focus on our community in the East Midlands is important as it reflects the maturing of democracy in the United Kingdom since the nineteenth century and the demands by industrial workers of access to the countryside, especially in the Peak moorlands, for the privileges not offered to them by the wealthy landowners. Post 1945, the engagement of rural land protection legislation started in our community and continues to focus on an occasionally paradoxical strategy to protect the rural environment and develop recreation offers for the visitor. The strategy and policy has often caused disruption to market-force models of development that have been promulgated on the basis of equity of deployment of scarce resources that may well have not received central government funding for more than four decades and the rise of neo-liberalism in the late 1970s.
What is being explored in the approach is the capacity for the destination East Midlands, from its constituent parts in Derbyshire and the Peak District, to use actor-network theory as a construct for identifying design aspects which are indeed special and to some extent inimitable for future development. In this development, destination design elements are selected as central to the understanding of community. More specifically it is the constituent components of the community that are driven by actors and interpreted for engaged, integrative and planned development that reflects firstly, values, secondly acknowledges the role of critical incidents and emerges with design that is the concurrence of what is termed ACES, a) accrual of values, beliefs and identity in the design, b) cohesive in mapping across to the design elements that truly reflect the community in its visitor offer, c) enduring in the sense that elements are not fleeting or insubstantial and d) sharing in that community and visitors share the outcomes and knowledge is retained within the community as a destination.
- Literature Review
Our focus is on this deregulated, highly competitive and resource hungry political environment that is forcing stakeholders to evaluate and invest in community from non-traditional sectors like higher education. In the developed nations this has not come as a surprise in post-Hobbesian perspectives emerging from economic views in the post-1945 era (Lord and Tewdwr-Jones, 2018). Devolution of responsibility for community development emerged as a real threat to resourcing community development in the 1970s and this has been reinforced in various political scenarios with re-assignation of development responsibility to key actors within the community; not from the central government (Varady et al., 2015). The real issues were more about how to address iniquitous resourcing for rural and attractive communities and secondly how to plan for skills for planning with scarce resources since the mid twentieth century (Tait and Inch, 2016; Davoudi and Madanipour, 2015; Haaland and van den Bosch,2015; Pike et al., 2015). By no means is the community in the Peak District in a unique dilemma with devolution and skills paucity. It is, however, a destination that feels immense pressure to support development and conservation; two needs that are opposed in principle and practice. There are certain features of shared values, beliefs and identity which appear immutable to all observers and respondents appear to accord with these. Firstly is an observation that we are no longer conducting business as normal using a market-forces neo-liberal model established with devolution of power and devolution of opportunity to secure investment and socio-economic equity for the community for over forty years (see Dwyer, 2018). Secondly, that we share observations of transformative action which empowers the former disempowered, be they observed as female, ageing, youthful, disabled, disenfranchised, without key skills (Gillovic et al., 2018; Reisinger, 2015). Thirdly, we are negotiating the future for communities through an equity model that seeks concurrence and approval from a wider-than-ever set of stakeholders. The emergent model is shaped by measuring such issues as resilience and triple-bottom line sustainability and possibly the measurement of seventeen key sustainable development goals (Espiner, Orchiston and Higham, 2017). Fourthly, we celebrate a planning model that sources integrative approaches from the political, social and environmental perspectives that will drive economic gains (Dredge and Jamal, 2015; Bramwell and Lane, 2014). What has appeared as scarce is the application of these four components in more-developed communities; they are keenly observed in less-developed communities and especially so in emergent economies coupled with tourism resort development (see for example, Mostafanezhad, Norum and Shelton, 2016; Ruiz Ballesteros et al., 2017; Boluk, Cavaliere and Higgins-Desbiolles, 2017; Tolkach and King, 2015). We have a gap in our knowledge which can now be partially filled.
To create worldviews that truly indicate our shared passion as stakeholders to develop worldviews that can share and care whilst still driving the bridges between last century’s profit and competition model requires reflexive learning (Debbage, 2018; Dwyer et al., 2016; Dredge and Jamal, 2015; Hjalager, 2015). The second area for reflexive learning and one that is key to evaluating the relative strength and merits of engagement is the actor-network concept (Latour, 2004). Although actor-network has frequently been used as a toll to engage the use of technology and shared resources for development in tourism we opine that the concept may well suit the evaluation of interventions and forms a basis for the learning completed in the community under observation (Melis et al., 2015; Dredge, 2006).
An interesting and relevant emerging dialogue is that of planned design. In our examples University staff and students elect to contribute time and input to the process and procedures of planned development by employing designs tried and tested in best-practice, benchmarked, destinations.
Actors and networks have long been considered as essential to success in forming, creating and leaving a legacy of authority and legitimacy in positive development, moreover environmentalism, in the context of inferred resource and mastery for future endorsement of power-broking and the groundwork needed for exploring alternatives and making useful choices between the rather polarised conservation or development agenda (see for example Davies, 2002 in Cambridgeshire). In a study conducted in New Zealand the role of partnership and public/private sharing of development agendas has been even more of a strategic role for power brokers (Larner and Craig, 2005). There is an additional focus on neoliberalism and marketization of power in development and strategic approaches that is undeniable in mature destinations. As Thatcher would have stated forty years ago, ‘There is No Alternative’ (Fisher,2009). However, partnership development and networking in development studies is very far from simple or ‘plain sailing’ as Holman (2008) discovered in a study in Portsmouth, UK. The onus is perhaps on the resourced-partner (may well still be public sector expertise and capacity) to make the support for the not-for-profit or the private sector more readily transparent and available to ensure that networks and actors are indeed enablers and not simply barriers that selected stakeholders may never cross (again, Turrini et al., 2010, experience is relevant). A meta review of the value of networks does indicate that network structures are unquestionably valuable and valued by actors; perhaps more problematic is the array of skills available in communities to tackle development issues across the panoply of interdisciplinary needs for the community at the heart. It is not simply a question of scarcity of resources and enablers but more a question of sorting volunteers and agreeing on some sort of social-capital sharing at a very fundamental level within the community (Provan et al., 2007). Furthermore, the resultant enablers for social capital accrual at the firm level are occasionally barred by lack of trust or reciprocity and the concept of offering voluntary resources to networks is certainly not straightforward as a result (Muthuri et al., 2009). Scarcity of resources for creating enduring networks of capable actors is a barrier and not easily crossed in the context of public/private partnerships and the somewhat uncertain future of accrued social capital within the community This could be construed as ‘community carrying capacity’ where some equity of exchange in the knowledge traded is given as standard and equitable (Paarlberg and Varda, 2009). The role of stakeholder responsiveness may well be critical to our success stories. The critical skills in planning, implementing, reviewing and documenting stories may depend on the capacity that our locally empowered spokespeople and self-proclaimed experts bring to the development agendas through their prior experience and gained expertise. This capacity may be obtained in a local context (local expertise), or a global project (international expertise and exposure) or a regional context (local government or regional business).
Such experience at local government level may reflect the evolution of alternative planning processes such as local economic partnerships (LEPs), enterprise zones and regional panels (all United Kingdom examples from Haughton and Allmendinger, 2017).
Often this experience and expertise is gained to deal with the compromise between development in a socio-economic political context and conservation in an ecosystem context. In Europe these can be seen as making the compromise without fear (See, for example, Groningen and London in Spijker and Parra, 2018). In emerging champions of environmentalism, the compromise has been studied that identifies emerging capacity in public and private sectors (see, for example in Kerala, Kokkranikal et al., 2015). Clever use of critical planning skills emerges in Queensland where immutable values are identified alongside adaptable values (Liburd and Becken, 2017). The capacity and experience brought to the development agenda by skills honed in environmental battles to manage the expectations of commercial creative enterprise are useful in our context. A balance of experience and scientific study needs exploring in many communities that inevitably face this challenge of opportunity and compromise. At a regional level this imagination and opportunity to be creative, enterprising and transformative has been explored in Wales (Piggott, 2018). Scale may be critical here; regional applications may appear to be simpler to plan, execute and review. Dormer (2014) applies the role of collaboration with accountability. The accountability of key stakeholders may well prove to be a measure of success in regional case studies where public and private resources are gathered together but no successful measure of outcomes and baseline data key performance indicators are seldom met.
Add to this equation the role that created outcomes and repositories detail new resources created for development in bonding and bridging social capital. Such relations are vital but over time lost to contracted work that is poorly documented for the future (see, for example a Romanian community in Iorio and Corsale, 2013).
Central to this discussion and highlighting the principles behind stakeholder engagement and active destination planning for communities are efforts by all public, private and third-way stakeholders to move forward with planned destination design (Fernandes, 2011; Baggio et al., 2010; Pardellas de Blas and Padin Fabeiro, 2004; Dredge, 1999). This can be termed the integrative or integrated approach favoured by Dredge and Jamal, (2015) and Bramwell and Lane (2014) and cited earlier.
A further perspective is that of multiple decision makers distilling from many perspectives an amalgam of research-academic leads combined with consultancy within the sector (community development, health and welfare, education, business innovation and trade in tourism and hospitality) (see for example, Jones and Spence, 2017; Christoforou and Pisani, 2016; Cheshire et al., 2015; Thuessen and Nielsen, 2014; . This evaluation is critical to supporting resource scarcity in skills, explicit and tacit knowledge acquisition for the community in question. In an integrated model the outcomes can be expressed as bonding and bridging relations (see the Romanian example in Iorio and Corsale, 2013). The difficulty may be in expressing derived value in either bonding or bridging capital but contemporary thinking extols the virtues of social capital that delivers brand identity, inimitability and cohesion to the community and there are examples in our project. Unfortunately inward investment appears to be seldom accumulated as a correlation to the accumulated social capital presented in the examples. Inward investment in terms of economic capital appears to rely more on proven evidence from empirical activity in more conventional terms. These conventions represent the commonly accepted data sets from UK’s own STEAM (Scarborough Tourism Economic Activity Monitor) and are used as benchmarks of success for enterprising corporates or small-medium sized enterprises who need such evidence to convince lending institutions to advance loans for expansion of attractions, accommodation, auxiliary services used by tourists and typical of the sector’s inward investment portfolios and expectations. Sadly, social capital may well prove useful as a bellwether for public sector organisations wishing to prove the ‘health’ or wellbeing of the overall community. In many locations the measurement of healthy communities that are perceived as delivering to visitors experiences that are inimitable, based on shared community values and perceived to deliver year-round triple-bottom line sustainability do not measure economic benefits shared by the community in equal (see Kokkranikal et al., 2015 on a measurement of environmental benefits in Kerala; emergent methodology for socio-ecological benefits in Groningen and London by Spijker and Parra, 2018; compromise-free and unique and adaptable Great Barrier Reef, Liburd and Becken, 2017).
However, at the heart of translating, sifting, storing and re-offering is the University representing third-way, charities and educationalists. This University has at its core a set of values and beliefs that drive curriculum, student experience and qualifications and qualities and are embedded within the setting in the region. A community-focused university which prides itself on work-related and problem-based learning (Finch et al., 2016; Schopfel at al., 2015). The paper posits that specific focus by University staff on employing problem-based or work-based learning leads the stakeholders within the community to adopt both students and staff in sharing new inputs to familiar problems with a fresh set of eyes and experiences that hitherto were not consulted. Outcomes from this community-connectedness have indeed been observed and documented through this paper’s findings. One is the now more common community-interest company established as a listed company but with charitable aims by enterprising volunteers. The capacity to innovate, to commit to new but maybe unfamiliar enterprises with skills derived from past experience or current transformative action is key to the success (Wever and Keeble, 2016; Beeton, 2006; Tosun, 2006; Blackstock, 2005; Svensson et al., 2005; Jamal and Getz, 1995). Our initial thoughts on components of multiple worldviews overlain the acto-network model as shown in Figure 1 ().
Figure 1: Worldviews – Conceptual Modelling.
- Methodology
In undertaking this research, we had to think carefully about what we were attempting and how it expressed our relationship with ontology and epistemology. Thinking through the analysis forced us to consider how we think the nature of reality and what is the relationship between the knower and what can be known.
We have adopted an approach to this research which is identifiable as one version of constructivism. This was particularly important as we wanted to create a space for our respondents to fully express themselves about the policy processes that they have been involved with. This reinforced our decision not to use any hard notion of positivistic research approaches but focus more on the qualitative ones. Our friends Lugosi, Lynch and Morrison (2009:1469) remarked more specifically about hospitality research but in a way which reads across to our work: “Researchers often adhere to phenomenological or constructivist ontologies adopting experimental research methods associated with the more recent historical moments of qualitative research where researcher reflexivity is stressed in order to foreground the subjective process in the construction of knowledge” We would go further because what we are striving to do is to encourage the reflexivity in our respondents as well as ourselves. We would argue that this approach allows the exploration of not a single process but multiple processes and to question not one knowledge but multiple constructions of relevant knowledge.
We found this helped us to operationalise the principles of critical reflexivity. This is informed by Argyris and Scon’s 1974 work on the ‘reflective practitioner’. Jarvis (1995) outlined seven different levels of reflection. These included:
1) reflectivity – awareness of specific, contextualised perceptions, meanings and behaviours
2) affective reflectivity – paying attention to how individuals feel about what they are doing and how it is being perceived, thought and acted upon
3) discriminant reflectivity – assessing the efficacy of how thoughts, perceptions and meanings relate to their actions
4) judgemental reflectivity – awareness of the value of judgements made around the actions
5) conceptual reflectivity – are the concepts being developed appropriate and/or adequate
6) psychic reflectivity – how is reflection built into the people’s mental processes involved
7) theoretical reflectivity – assessing how one set of perspectives may be more or less adequate to understand personal experiences.
As Shacklock and Smyth(1998: 6) observed, reflexivity in research is “built on an acknowledgement of the ideological and historical power dominant forms of inquiry exert over the researcher and the researched.” Creating spaces for respondents to speak and elaborate their own positions was crucial in allowing them to elaborate their own reflections. McCool, Butler, Buckley, Weaver and Wheeller (2013:217) however note that “the mental models we carry around influence our behaviour (and even the evidence we may see in scientific exploration) and we would add reflection.
- Findings
As has been opined in recent research it is the responsibility of a variety of key actors working in the public, private and third-way to establish and commit to sustainable practices at a community level since the middle of the twentieth century. Increasingly this commitment has been devolved to a set of actors working at a local level where activity is focused on interventions to assure sustainable communities by shared action to address behaviour, infrastructure and capabilities to embed sustainable knowledge within the communities (Bramwell, 2017). This work to embed sustainability in our daily lives and routines requires behavioural changes in supply and consumption of tourism and , increasingly the focus is on embedding this behavioural change across a range of disciplines in shared knowledge to achieve the goals set. Authors see this as compassion in consumption (Weaver and Jin, 2016) and see the multiple disciplines involved as outcomes such as voluntourism (perhaps for third-way and community-led initiatives), in religion and belief, social tourism and fair trade activity. All approaches being multi- or interdisciplinary in nature require investment in the right people for the right job in going about achieving sustainable development goals (Saarinen and Rogerson, 2014).
In this worldviews project we sought to explain the success factors of individual respondents as actors according to the exploratory and emerging model based on Latour’s Actor-Network theory (2004).
This worldview model has components that we have termed accrual, cohesive and sharing (ACES) emerging from the unstructured interviews conducted. Accrual represents a legacy from the perspective of the respondents in the destination that they personally identify as critical elements of the sustainability of the development agenda. In judgments of the critical role of networks, partnerships and binding social and economic ties between actors we mark for attention the cohesiveness of the representations and elements of the role of networks in the eyes of those representing achievements of signifiers of networks. In the legacy of achievements we indicate where repositories of new skills, capacities or capabilities reside in the community which are categorised as sharing elements or signposts as indicated by respondents.
We did not set out to determine the worldviews of respondents based upon a pre-set list of achievements, skills, capacities or outcomes but simply asked the respondents to consider their own achievements, skills, capacities and outcomes based upon their observations and considerations in a largely unstructured interview conducted face-to-face or via other forms of communications (email, skypes, social media). The concept of actor-network and worldviews therefore was not set in the epistemology of business and tourism studies or management but from a socially constructed approach exploring and reflexive in its manner and operation (references).
Furthermore, the authors sought to contextualise local responses (at a regional level where identity may be a strong factor in coherence of analysis (reference). This local level would therefore enable the actor-network approach to apply ACES to a global audience and provide the guide for future reference to target normative divisions of responsibilities for outcomes and for future work in ensuring resources are available. This global reach could therefore build skills and resources and competences for the public sector, centres of research such as Higher Education Institutions and for the growing emergent private sector increasingly charged with responsibility for building repositories of knowledge shared to minimise the impact on diluted public sector reserves to build resilient and sustainable communities of practice (reference).
The goal is to build on existing sustainable development goals for communities, regions and global audiences, perhaps along the lines of ‘resposunstable’ practices where awareness of unsustainable tourism and community development have created an agenda and action (see Mihalic, 2016). The concept of responsibility for sustainable action within the networks is becoming more clearly explored and explained by acknowledgement of responsibility by leading actors that have self-declared rather than having been identified by the researchers.
In conducting the unstructured interviews with respondents who self-declared an interest in sustainable development agendas the initial discussion tended towards a reflection on who is deemed responsible for the private, public and third sector (largely university and teaching, researching roles) and a reflection on candid engagement with the concept of sustainable development with an emphasis on community in terms of definition rather than destination.
A tendency to ignore the conceptual approaches to sustainability that engaged issues seen as peripheral to the respondent’s role was marked. I am not an accessibility, disability or disenfranchised role in my relationship with the community or that falls beyond my remit. This indicated a lack of integrative thinking with respondents who do not see a 360 degree reflection as being useful in defining a worldview, responsibility or emerging framework for sustainable development.
Other respondents tended to place their views in terms o9f the projects that they committed to and specific issues surrounding the mandate they were given, or had accepted, to detail their perspective and suggestions made to deal with emergent issues and related factors as barriers or enablers to this study.
Overarching worldviews reflect a lack of triple-bottom line thinking. For example, if there are few determinants of sustainable economic development then there are few opportunities to pursue social and environmental concerns in the community.
In the current neoliberal, market forces model there are concerns over small business viability and longevity and unfortunately, evidence of unsustainable business ventures losing the determination to retain the business opportunity and preferring to close operations.
One interesting insight is that retailers and attractions, activity operators could receive a rebate on business rates to prevent such retrenchment and closure.
In any case, representatives perceived that many business owners/operators did not empathise with tourism development as their own business is not dependent on buoyant demand from tourism; their business operations relate directly to community purchases and from residents within a fifty-mile radius. This well reflects a reality that in excess of 20 million people reside within a fifty mile radius of the communities in question. Tourism may well appear peripheral when the business model is predicated on local consumption and repeated local consumption. |We have therefore a two tier development agenda – for community and the near vicinity and for tourism and a more global visitor economy.
The inference is that some businesses do not see any need to develop the cultural and heritage offer being made to visitors; their engagement depends entirely on perceived value exchanges that do not require involvement with attractions, activities other than those needed to access locations.
Government policy does not actively encourage tourism as a strong strategy for community development; it appears to some respondents that tourism is ‘nice to have’ but in no way essential for sound development. Supporting this view is the cold hard reality of a shortage of cash for special projects supportive of tourism and recreation for visitors. A straightened economic outlook for local and regional government bodies effectively means there is no disposable income available to entice inward investment or to support nascent business start ups. This phenomenon was created in the aftermath of the banking and economic crisis in 2008. This situation has remained unchanged, despite a government change in 2010, for a decade. There is no light at the end of this tunnel, nor any specific direction that moves the community toward social enterprise and start-ups that existed before 2008.
A further specific issue relates to this transfer of responsibility from central to local government to sustain products and services that might appeal to tourism. There has emerged a community of third-way enthusiasts and volunteers from within the community who may, or more likely may not, declare self-interest and capacity to manage emergent opportunities in a joint public-private sector offer for tourism. Regrettably many larger companies are self-sufficient in capacity and skills to expand and enlarge their business and do not tend to be supportive of smaller businesses. The demand for services and products is not seasonal although tourism appears to be a largely seasonal business with peaks in summer (June-August) and troughs in the UK winter. Therefore we experience a ‘chicken and egg’ analogy to development. Business owners would prefer a year-round business and are not focused on visitor demands; attractions and activities are familiar with peaks and troughs and wish to retain the opportunity to close for the low season and to employ additional staff and resources in the peak periods. The chances of economic stability in this dichotomy are indeed uncertain and unsecured.
The attractions and accommodation sectors are key to encouraging small business and corporate business to reflect on the value perceived from the unrealised and maybe pent-up demand for tourism.
Consultancy work conducted by the University of Derby has actually generated sufficient resources to establish community interest companies (CICs) that are unfortunately unsustainable due to aforementioned lack of publicly contestable funds and application of too much pressure on volunteers, who we could term , community and culture champions. There are insufficient funds to support start-ups and insufficient funds to reimburse volunteers and third-way specialist volunteers who must be reimbursed for inevitable expenses.
There are large concerns of training volunteers and skills specialised to support community development. All parties present in the research project have similar issues with lack of funds to upskill and develop capacity to enlarge operations and develop a strategic focus. Regrettably many respondents are aware of the need for new economic generation and to attract inward investment from the private sector. There is a will to undertake this within the third-sector and private sector business but very few reliable sources of evidence of how this activity can be undertaken. Indeed it is the private sector that are driving business development and this sector appears to have no involvement with the sector specialists in marketing and development within this community.
Only those with a vested interest and possessing a business opportunity in the community can enlarge and develop a more strategic approach to sustainable development that meets the needs of the community and tourism.
Samples of designed activities that are used for tourism and by the destination simultaneously for community growth:
CIC Development Association was established 2016.
Responsible for new series of events for the public including essentially unique elements of culture and heritage of location.
Focus on creating accessible new services for all users. Articulating opportunities for new services based upon available best use of leader funding.
Town team established with support of DMO membership.
Set up a new initiative to provide essential toilets for community and visitor use “Spend a penny”.
Again, articulating funds from available sources and provision of a resource to be equally used by community and visitors.
“A heritage action zone”
Funding is possible from applications supported by CIC and LAs .
Three local universities support performance, creative arts, thermal water options, and business funding from LEP and EU.
“City punches above its weight” in a n uncertain business environment.
Attracts visitors through collaboration with major inbound tour operators.
Identified five key attractions and associated themes to take both business and tourism forward.
| Worldview | Discussion/Literature | Possible Outcome | Decode/ Example |
| Engaged | Sustainability policies and new economic partnerships
(Haughton and Allmendinger, 2017 |
Neighbourhood plan | A,C,E,S Integrative |
| Deregulated environment and politics | Policy-led and local direction of tourism management ( Dredge and Jamal, 2015; Latour, 2004; Dredge, 2006) | Interventions to maximise socio-economic benefits to majority | A Legacy: Heritage Centre
A Volunteer Staffed Community S Recreation Centre S Revitalised marketplace C Web-led identity |
| Planned destination design | Complex, cultural and creative planning (Baggio et al., 2010; Fernandes, 2011) | Planned spaces fit for purpose | A Rise of independent inimitable retail offering
A Defending our culture S Destination is on the map |
| Integrative approach with shared social capital | Resilient (Cheshire et al., 2015) | Harnessing Intellectual property | S Sport plus tourism plus education plus trade plus creative arts |
| Community Interest Companies Third Sector Engaged | Experience-led (Tosun, 2006; Beeton, 2006) | Emerging new business opportunities | S Railway
S E Festival S E Carnival S Heritage Centre |
| Knowledge Managed | Competitive advantage of graduates (Finch et al., 2016) | Self-proclaimed badges of experience economy – Fairtrade destination, | S Website |
| Macro and micro application | Bottom up (endogenous) planning to compensate for ‘ad hoc’ experience-led approach | A,C,E,S Sharing capacity and capabilities to develop projects into long term legacies |
In this figure the three partner groups within the network in Derbyshire have taken a specific role with their values and beliefs, identified the opportunity to champion that activity into the community and persuaded others in the network to adopt these actions for the benefit of multiple actors including public and private sector and the third way/university sector for the future prosperity of both the community and the destination as a designscape for the assembled actors.
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Sample Questions:
Unstructured interview questions based upon the literature:
Do you work to a sustainable agenda-?
Does your community have clear plans for a sustainable future?
Who shares these plans? Who designed the plans?
Could you tell me a little about those plans and where they can be accessed?
Is culture important to your community?
If it is please explain why. If it is not, please explain why?
To what extent does government policy dictate the way that the community is now considering tourism?
Is your community becoming a destination of distinction?
If it is, what are the features that you consider are distinctive?
Describe how the community makes good use of enterprising individuals.
To what extent does the community acknowledge a need to develop, or to grow
Is there evidence of this desire?
Does the current thinking reflect a focus on tourism as an economic driver of progress?
Does the current thinking reflect a focus on tourism as a social driver of progress?
What is the evidence for the economic driver? Evidence for the social driver? What is the evidence for sustainability? (Environmental driver also needed)
How does the word ‘sustainability’ reflect the community’s engagement or attitude towards tourism?
Does ’sustainability’ work top down or bottom up in your community?
[1] Peter Wiltshier, University of Derby, United Kingdom.
