Creative encounters with local New Zealanders through interactive workshops
mrs
denise
raymond
manager
Creative Tourism New Zealand
business
Annual Budget/Currency
00 64 3 526 8812
7196
Kereru, Herring Stream Road, RD1
Motueka
7196
Quality of tourist experience and educational benefit to tourists , Quality of benefit to residents for the destination .
Small (1 to 100 employees)
Tourism-related business
2003
Living culture, General tourism.
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Through creative cultural workshops tutors interact on a genuine and personal basis with workshop participants allowing a true cross-cultural understanding to take place.
Creative tourism enhances the distinctive character of various regions across New Zealand by offering visitors the chance to spend time with local 'tutors' through interactive 'workshops'. The tutors are proud to share their skills and passion for their specific arts, crafts or cultural and natural heritage, and in the process facilitating visitors' exploration of their own creativity.
Creative tourism has been pioneered and established in New Zealand as an innovative approach to cultural tourism. It is a newly recognised form of tourism. Through participation in interactive workshops, travelers develop their creative potential, and get closer to local people. They become more actively involved in the culture of the countries and communities they are visiting. While the cultural tourist enjoys visiting, say, a pottery workshop or sampling a range of local foods, the creative tourist takes a pottery course or learns to cook local dishes.
Creative Tourism New Zealand has developed from a regional into a national organisation over the course of its five years of existence. It contributes to enhancing local cultural practices across six different regions in New Zealand, including major creative hubs such as the Nelson Bays and Christchurch regions. The quality of the offer, combined with the possibility to actively engage visitors in the local cultural tissue, leads to a more memorable, long-lasting experience eventually benefitting both visitors and host communities. Creative tourism fosters understanding through the principles of creativity and contributes to local people re-valuing their heritage and culture. It minimizes negative impacts in that it uses existing local structures (such as local tutors' homes or workshops) and allows visitors an easier access to the specific local culture and environment of New Zealand.
Local residents are the providers of the creative tourism experience and as such are a vital part of success. By achieving interaction with visitors and teaching them for instance how to weave, carve, cook or paint something distinctively New Zealand, traditional cultural practices have come to be re-valued, especially among young people. The community as a whole can benefit from this interactive, hands-on approach to tourism. The aim of creative tourism is to provide an income to local tutors who want to share their skills with interested travelers by promoting their activities through a nation-wide network.
Creative tourism provides travelers with a very hands-on experience of the single cultural aspects of New Zealand. It therefore acts as a means for travelers to become directly involved rather than just skimming the surface. By creating their own bone carvings or harakeke (NZ flax) weavings, they will value these traditional skills more than simply viewing or buying items in a shop, having gone through the creative process of actually producing their own pieces with local tutors.
Creativity is the key to achieving value for both travelers and local residents. It is a unique opportunity for visitors to craft their own pieces of artwork in the process of participating in an interactive workshop activity, such as carving, sculpting or weaving, thereby developing a hands-on feel for the specific natural/cultural offers of the place they visit. Active, creative involvement means fun for travelers and teaches them meaning and sensibility to act more responsibly in the future.
Finance for Creative Tourism New Zealand comes from the subscriptions of tutors who pay to be listed on the Creative Tourism website. This is used to market their products (creative tourism workshops) to domestic as well as foreign visitors. Overhead costs are accounting, insurance, internet (website), brochure production and display, as well as the subscription to the NZ tourism website. Currently, the organisation is run by a small number of enthusiastic, volunteer staff.
Creative Tourism New Zealand will eventually become financially and organizationally sustainable once more bookings for existing tutors' workshops take place and/or new tutors can be recruited. To get there, more investments in marketing and PR are needed. We are confident that there is a lot of potential demand for that type of tourism, but as it is not a conventional tourism product, we are aware of the extra efforts needed to reach the general traveling market.
At the moment, the organisation lacks the financial resources in developing and achieving broader market exposure. More money is needed to bring creative tourism to visitors' attention upon as well as before arrival in New Zealand. At this stage, it is vital to increase the number of bookings to allow tutors a reasonable income from their workshop activities. At the same time, we are confident that each new participant will help us achieve that, as most of them continue writing and talking about their unique experience.
Plans for growth include the signing up of more skilled tutors across New Zealand who are ambassadors of the country's unique cultural skill set. To achieve that, word is out through a number of articles published in national and international media and travel directories. A big opportunity for growth is UNESCO's endorsement of the creative tourism concept and the major international conference about Creative Tourism which took place in Santa Fe in September 2008. This has raised the profile of various creative tourism initiatives throughout the world.
Having had the privilege to travel extensively, I have realised that the most memorable and thought provoking experiences are always linked with the people I met while travelling. Learning how to make local craft with a local artist or artisan is a wonderful way to communicate about each other's culture and this is why I woud like to make this type of experience more easily available to travellers.
Denise migrated to New Zealand with Crispin, the founder of Creative Tourism in 2001. Having chosen to live on a wonderful property in the hills near Motueka, most of their energy is spent on the land caring for the trees and propagating native plants. Denise has always been enthusiastic about the concept of creative tourism and has taken the role of manager in October 2005. Before that she had been working mainly as a translator and a French teacher.
Create your own bonecarving, clay or woodturning souvenir; learn to make silver or green stone jewellery,
a hand-forged knife, kiwiana paper art, felt from a selection of wool fleeces; explore the new medium of fused glass; meet the wine maker; make your own cheese, olive oil blend, or a delicious pavlova; discover the art of coffee making; spend a day learning about the New Zealand bush in an interactive way or weaving a traditional flax basket; get your inspiration from the New Zealand flora and fauna to create a unique painting or travel journal...
Additional support is needed to raise awareness of this new form of tourism both nationally and internationally. Progress has been made but a lot more needs to be done to promote the concept. We would welcome mentions or links on website with a more established profile and we do to increase the ongoing publication of articles relating to this new form of tourism.