Author: Nat Trimarchi
Date published: 15 September, 2003
Copyright: Rainwater Productions

In this paper, presented at the 2001 Museums Australia (Qld) National Conference, Nat Trimarchi argues that enterprises operating successfully in the cultural tourism space share a tangible connection with a community, and look to artists rather than to the display makers to interpret product.

INTRODUCTION

I feel like I’ve been talking about culture all my life.

There are several things that can define culture – for example ‘culture is language’. But for the purpose of this presentation I’m going to use this broad definition:

”Culture is the thing that defines who you are, what you are and what you can be. It is the thing that most profoundly influences your behaviour. It’s the real you”.

And if you want to understand culture – just like if you want to understand the ‘real you’, you can’t stay on the surface; you need to get to the underbelly of it. Any traveller will tell you that.

Well that’s straightforward enough isn’t it? You would think so. So why does so much of what is termed ‘Cultural Tourism’ in this country have so little to do with culture? When you mention cultural tourism, most people still think you’re talking about bungie jumping or selling corked hats! We have not managed to resolve key questions about how cultural tourism should be developed here, and there is still a great reluctance for many, particularly artists and communities, to get meaningfully involved.

We need to ask ourselves: How culturally relevant is Cultural Tourism in Australia?

What can we learn from developments the US?

Hopefully somewhere in the next 20 minutes it will become clear just what kind of rethinking is necessary to create this shift. I’m going to firstly give you a general Overview, then we’re going to look briefly at Markets, Products and Programs in the US, and finish off with a summary of what we can learn from their experience. And towards the end it will hopefully become clear what implications I think this has for “The New Museum”. Now I have to preface all of this by saying that I am no ‘Museums’ expert, and my credentials are mainly in the area of the arts and community cultural development.

OVERVIEW

In recent years the USA has pumped new life into an ailing tourism industry by making cultural tourism its cornerstone. The catchcry: “All Tourism is Cultural Tourism” embodies the Partners in Tourism initiative, a 1995 directive from Congress, which has been the driving force.

By contrast, no such national approach has been taken in Australia where there has been a lack of broad based involvement from key sectors, like the Arts. This in turn is reflected in the limited scope of experiences available to visitors. Where work is being done, the product often still leans towards the ‘theme park’ experience replete with the latest commercial and technological gimmickry (read: ‘innovation’). The Americans on the other hand - having ‘been there, done that’ - now focus on authenticity and diversity, with strong community involvement. They realised some five years ago that they had a choice: either fix the visitor’s gaze on the ‘real’ America and its living cultures, or watch their tourism industry kill off the unique qualities that compel visitors to travel there in the first place.

This observation from American academic Alvin Rosenbaum illustrates the crossroad they reached:

“Disney is doing a booming business in weddings at Disney world…. Indeed, the new Disney community in Florida … is a complete creation of small town life, where the “citizens” themselves, sitting on their front porches, waving as their neighbours walk by on their way to the soda shop and band stand on the village square, will become the next parody of civic life encapsulated within an ersatz rendition of America’s past. Is this tourism? Is this life?” - Alvin Rosenbaum

In Australia, if you look closely, you’ll find that most cultural tourism product stretches the definition of the term ‘cultural’ beyond any useful point. And ‘diversity’, while seen as essential marketing rhetoric, is in fact embarrassingly limited when you consider what’s out there compared to the extent of our cultural diversity. But what’s also missing is a more meaningful, creative edge to the product development.

One reason is surely that the arts sector has been generally disengaged - leaving a valuable perspective out of the equation. There has been justifiable skepticism, both here and in the US, about the value to the arts and to the community of accepting the purely commercial imperatives set by the tourism industry. The ability to accommodate a broader social and more authentic cultural focus is a central issue. In the US this has been assisted by the concerted efforts of the Partners in Tourism to facilitate a common language and agenda among the three key sectors: heritage, arts and tourism.

As a result, arts and community organizations now talk about “extending tourism shoulder seasons”, while businesses that rely on tourism (like oil companies) have become major sponsors who talk in terms of “nurturing local culture”. If you visit the Tennessee Overhill Experience, for example, in the poor rural eastern corner of that state, you will see how cultural organizations are cooperating closely with local white-water rafting businesses to help keep people in the area longer while providing local artists with an income earning opportunity.

Since the Partners initiative has gained momentum, successful marketing campaigns like California, Culture’s Edge, funded in part by American Express, have taken the
visitor out of the mainstream experience and into the American underbelly. The new focus has been on supporting local product development directly involving communities, and extensions to ‘traditional’ tourism activities, with products such as the Beyond the Monuments tour of Washington, or the Chicago Neighbourhood Tours. Cultural tourism is now seen as a highly effective community development tool being embraced across the country by governments, communities and businesses at all levels. There is now also a more widely accepted view that:

“Defining the cultural tourism experience, makes it critical to view the arts as perhaps the largest subset of culture.”- Americans for the Arts

Moreover, the effect of this shift has been structural with the emergence of a whole raft of arts and tourism partnerships featuring resource and planning initiatives, infrastructure development, and product funding programs. Statewide cultural tourism plans are increasingly providing the framework.

Five years ago, with funding from state and local arts agencies, the Los Angeles County Convention and Visitors Bureau created the first cultural tourism department in the US. Today, more than 50 state tourism offices, state arts agencies, and local convention and visitors bureaus have cultural heritage tourism positions. 71% of the nation’s local arts agencies have partnerships with their Convention and Visitors Bureau. (US CVBs are the equivalent of our Regional Tourism Authorities). A whole range of private and public entities from state tourism or commerce departments to private heritage foundations have started generating their own funding programs, many now targeting artists working with communities. There is even a ‘Hotel-Motel Tax for the Arts’!

Building these sectoral links has led to a more robust interpretation of what cultural tourism should be about, and of course, a much more interesting range of products.

THE MARKET

Before we have a closer look at some of these products, let’s just briefly examine the kind of useful information that’s increasingly becoming available to policy makers and product developers.

In the US, there’s a better understanding of the travel market – from a cultural perspective. The research suggests that tourism is evolving towards a “complete lack of differentiation between tourism products and other cultural products and processes, such as ethnic restaurants, popular music, public television, market driven festivals, shopping malls, movies, professional sport, etc.” (Alvin Rosenbaum).

The result is that two significant trends are seen as dominating the tourism market now and in the near future.

• Mass marketing is giving way to one-to-one marketing with travel being tailored to the interests of the individual consumer.
• A growing number of visitors are becoming special interest travellers who rank the arts, heritage and/or other cultural activities as one of the top five reasons for travelling.

Because of the proliferation of online services it’s easier for travellers to choose destinations and customize their itineraries based on their interests.

So what effect is this having on visitor characteristics in the US market? In short it means there are more Cultural Tourists. These are travellers usually defined as:

• motivated entirely or in part by artistic, heritage or cultural offerings;
• willing to spend more dollars per travel day than other travelers; and
• wanting new travel experiences.

They tend to visit:

• Art exhibitions and galleries
• Folklife and craft centers
• Theatres and museums
• Downtowns and ethnic neighborhoods etc…(Festivals and fairs; Historic sites and monuments; Architectural and archeological treasures, and National and state parks)

A 1998 Travel Industry Association of America survey shows that of 199.8 million US adult travellers, 92.4 million (46%) included either a visit to an historic place or cultural event, with 31% attending an historic site, 24% attending museums, 15% attending art galleries, and 14% seeing live theatre. 29% of these added extra time to their trip because of that cultural activity.

One lesson for the Museum and Gallery sector here - if we can learn anything from the American research - is that, clearly, cultural tourists are not just people who are interested in a history (or science or art) lesson – the quality of the experience is key.

While there’s still not much good qualitative data available in Australia, we need to be aware that tourists around the world are becoming far more selective.

THE PRODUCT

So, what kind of products are out there or being developed in the US to cater for the cultural tourist? For my purposes I have categorised these as Major Attractions, Location Based products (including Trails/Festivals); Regional and Rural products; African-American, Ethnic and American Indian cultural products; and Sub-cultural products (eg Gay tourism products). Of course these are not exhaustive and there are clearly overlaps.

From these (and because of limited time) I want to draw out just a few examples of particular interest for the following reasons. Firstly, I’ve chosen these because they show a variety of what’s out there; they go to the underbelly of the American experience; and they have a genuine community connection – in short they offer authentic experiences! Some show how the arts have impacted significantly on the cultural tourism agenda in the US. Some are great success stories and some are success stories waiting to happen, but they all in some way respond to the fact that, as the Americans have discovered:

“Visitors come not just to encounter a place or tradition, but to interact with the living stewards”

MAJOR ATTRACTIONS

These include an increasingly broad range of attractions including museums such as: Smithsonian Air and Space Museum; Holocaust Museum; Regional examples: Delta Blues Museum (Mississippi), Mississippi River Museum (Memphis); Desert Museum (Tucson). The main thing to point out is that, in the US, these ‘big end of town’ attractions are packaged as flagship products in an increasingly broader palette of cultural tourism products (See California: Culture’s Edge), and this kind of marketing is seen as essential in growing the cultural tourism industry.

LOWER EAST SIDE TENEMENT MUSEUM (www.tenement.org)
While there are many state of the art museums in the USA, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum is a good example of one created out of an authentic community setting, putting heritage into a contemporary context. Using existing attributes (and excellent research) it uniquely portrays the drama of life for immigrant communities in Lower East Side Manhattan where many settled between 1863 and 1935. It does this without resorting to hi-tech devices like touch-screens or holograms, but by simply utilising the setting and combining engaging tour guides with sensitively arranged material.

Basically the experience consists of a one to one and a half hour tour through a fivestory tenement building where people from more than 20 countries made their home. The building is located in its original setting in a living neighbourhood and is deliberately understated as ‘a museum’. The recreated tenement apartments document the immigrant experience. In the ‘interactive, living history Confino Program’, for example, visitors can meet and talk to an actor portraying Victoria Confino, a Sephardic Jewish teenager from Turkey who lived there in 1916.

A range of tours is presented, including a neighbourhood heritage tour of the surrounding public spaces and historic buildings, describing how the different groups shaped and continue to shape the community. An activities program incorporates children’s book authors reading stories that trace the experiences of immigrant teenagers; uses local residents to produce arts exhibits that speak to the issues of acculturation and change within the neighbourhood; invites youth to write, research and produce plays based on the lives of former residents; and so on. In short it’s an active cultural centre. Features include:

• careful and committed presentation made by the guides;
• original and authentic items arranged ‘in situ’ rather than ‘on display’ creating an atmosphere simply and effectively (rather than leaving you with the feeling you’re in a theatre set);  and
• excellent minimalist use of audio recordings of actual inhabitants describing daily rituals, events, and feelings of the time.

The best thing about this museum is that you leave feeling that you haven’t just visited a museum, theme park, shrine or monument and, even though the surrounding communities might have evolved, it is still somehow connected to them in a real and timeless way.

LOCATION BASED PRODUCTS (incl. TRAILS/FESTIVALS)

There are a large number of interesting Location based attractions including Trails incorporating either self-drive or guided tours, and festivals. Trails of particular note are: National Millennium Trails; South-eastern Washington Heritage Corridor (tape and driving tours); Mississippi Blues Driving Trail; Maine Art/Museum Trail.

CONNECTICUT - IMPRESSIONIST ART TRAIL (http://www.arttrail.org/)
The National Millennium Trails is a partnership between several agencies and organizations. Its goal is the creation of a nationwide network of trails that protect the natural environment, interpret history and culture, and enhance alternative transportation, recreation and tourism.

The Connecticut Impressionist Art Trail celebrates the sites and landscapes from which one of America's most influential artistic genres was born, nurtured and ultimately disseminated. The trail helps maintain this legacy by connecting museums and historic sites across the state that house and exhibit the works created by American Impressionist painters a century ago…and also shows where they lived and worked. These artists brought with them a rare appreciation for the state's gentle countryside, rustic villages and picturesque shoreline.

I include this example mainly because while we have similar potential ‘products’ in Australia (such as Heidleberg in Victoria, or Hill End in New South Wales) there has been limited development of these in this way, or to this extent. It’s a unique example of packaging arts as a cultural tourism product and it’s different from something like MOMA because it sheds light not only on a whole movement in American art, but also the region where much or this movement originated. It has a connection to ‘place’ and ‘community’.

FESTIVALS

Festivals are significant cultural tourism attractions and deserve a specific brief mention here, particularly for their impact on regional and rural areas. So much so that in many regional towns and cities like Lafayette (LA) they have become major components of the local economy – and small businesses have come to rely on them.

The US International Festivals Association estimates that every year there are 50,000 to 60,000 half-day to one-day events and 5,000 to 6,000 festivals lasting two days or longer. Average attendance at each event is over 222,000….hence their value.

Noteworthy examples are: North Beach Jazz Festival; Festival Acadaienne; Blues music festivals and events; National Storytelling Festival (Jonesborough TN).

MAJOR REGIONAL SUCCESS STORIES

One of the great successes of the American model is that development hasn’t been limited to cities. There are some excellent regional examples that are well recognised as major, sustainable programs. In areas like Montana or Tennessee where there is little private money, government funding is used to fund any existing often non-arts infrastructure to develop CHT from the grassroots up: ie., from cultural mapping to tourism marketing. Strong examples are:

• Tennessee Overhill Experience (Etowah) – mentioned earlier. They hired folklorists to research and catalogue traditions, photograph and publish a book of “historic” rural signage, and so on. They basically use a community cultural development model.
• Illinois Rural Tourism Program, (Illinois Bureau of Tourism, Springfield)
• Lancaster County Planning Commission (Lancaster)

HANDMADE IN AMERICA (www.wnccrafts.org)
But as community based, economically successful, regional cultural tourism initiatives go - HandMade is hard to beat.

In 1993 a handful of Western North Carolinians, struggling to find fresh approaches to economic development and renewal in their mountains, realized that the answer didn't necessarily lie in newly recruited industry, but could potentially be found in the invisible industry of craftspeople already working steadily and exceptionally in shops, classrooms, studios, and galleries tucked away on small town main streets and back roads throughout the Blue Ridge Mountains. They got a grant, engaged over 360 citizens in a regional planning process and developed the highly successful HandMade brand.

Building on this support, HandMade has initiated programs in education, community and economic development for thousands of citizens in the region. Demonstrable results include a 10-15% increase in income for many of the craftspeople, and over $11 million in investment in six of the region's smallest towns. Strategies focus on creating sustainable economic development to provide business and financial support for craftspeople, to nurture the region's craft culture through public relations and education, and to maintain a rural quality of life.

HandMade is an organization run by 5 staff, (and each have to find a third of their salary each year themselves). Business owners or managers of all approved sites regularly attend a regional hospitality orientation course to facilitate the trail visitation process. An enormous amount of ‘civic input’ is responsible for much of HandMade’s success. Recent projects include the development of several glass and ceramic business incubator studios powered by landfill methane gas from abandoned landfills, and designed to equip two artists in residence and ten emerging artists lacking financial resources to set up their own businesses.

The region boasts an estimated US$122 million annual turnover from the craft produce alone, and 20 million visitors (who buy 68% of the product). Some 4000 full or part-time artisans are employed in the handmade industry and this number is increasing through an influx of artists from other regions. Products range from ceramics to fibre and glass goods sold largely in craft galleries and fairs but also through studio visits encouraged along the trail. Publication of a ’Craft Heritage Trails’ guidebook is the key marketing tool. Otherwise promotion is minimal: a website and advertorials published in newspapers and popular (mostly non-arts) magazines.

AFRICAN-AMERICAN, ETHNIC AND AMERICAN INDIAN CULTURAL PRODUCTS

There are many African-American, Ethnic And American Indian Cultural Products worth mentioning such as the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation museum/theatre spectacle: Unto These Hills (Northern Carolina).

One of the main ways this kind of product is delivered is through Tours. Many museums and galleries have guided tours. But the main problem I find with many of them is the low level of interactivity with the subject – so much depends on the tour guide because they are so ‘guide-centred’. So I looked at tours in the US that offered a more authentic approach. There are a wide range including self-guided walking and driving tours like the Mission Mural Tour in San Francisco or the SE Washington Heritage Corridor (audio/driving tour)

Harlem Heritage Tours: Jazz
This is a tour of the Jazz clubs and hang-outs in Harlem, which is not to be mistaken for the more mainstream equivalent called ‘Harlem Spirituals’ – where mostly white people sit in a bus and drive around Harlem interrupting church services. No this tour is run by a local entrepreneur Neil Shoemaker, who’s day job is working at the bank, and who is by night, the Jazz tour guide. It’s a largely one-man operation and Neil offers a range of tours including the Harlem Gospel Tour, The Malcolm X Tour and the Afro-Caribbean Tour, which are all based around Harlem’s central district.

The Jazz Tour costs $50 and consists of a 45 minute walking tour followed by dinner at Sylvia’s Soul Food Restaurant (“Authentic African-American Food”) and then entry to a local jazz night club whose location varies (according to what’s on), but includes the main famous Harlem jazz rooms such as Showman’s and the Lennox Lounge where people like Billy Holiday used to sing.

A typical group is small and might be about ten usually white people (but hey at least they’re walking!). This allows for much more interaction – especially since you can wait a long time to get fed at Sylvia’s!

But this tour offers an excellent insight into African-American culture in the heart of Harlem. Neil’s presentation is very intimate and generous and enthusiastically presented. The guide’s excellent local knowledge of the streets where he grew up, and his community contacts, which you inevitably meet, are a major bonus. You can’t beat this for interactivity! As well you get information on local social and political events, histories and personalities which are related well and triggered by sites such as the Powell building and the Therese Hotel (where Fidel Castro met with local leaders such as Malcolm X) as well as music houses like the Apollo Theatre… where not getting to look inside is compensated by a good rendition of the ‘feel’ of Wednesday Talent Nights, performed by the guide.

OK. This is one of those success stories waiting to happen, but there’s incredible scope here. It doesn’t represent a major cultural tourism enterprise when measured against say Broadway, especially in economic terms. But it does demonstrate the kind of authentic product increasingly being sought by the ‘special interest tourist’, and it’s arguable whether you could get a better presentation of the “special character” of Harlem in such a short time.

The Harlem Heritage Tours started one day when a couple of bored tourists got off an organised bus tour and asked Neil – who was walking home from work - to tell them about one of the buildings. Twenty minutes later they handed him $20 and pointed out another building further down the street. Neil’s only promotion is by advertising in Time Out magazine.

CHICAGO NEIGHBOURHOOD TOURS

By contrast with Neil’s small enterprise, the Chicago Neighbourhood Tours are very successful and high profile tours operated by the Chicago Cultural Centre. They employ tour coordinators, and community organizations provide ethno-specific guides to interpret various neighbourhoods in Chicago, where many people of diverse cultural backgrounds live. There are now about 40 tours in operation!

Surprisingly – or maybe not-surprisingly - the main target group for these tours are elderly people from Chicago who’ve rarely or never ventured into “those neighbourhoods”!
The tours work because they provide a ‘safe’ and accessible exposure to ethnic communities. But in return they also provide the communities an excellent opportunity to tell the stories and alternative histories that relate to the local areas.

Sometimes they combine visits to local cultural centres, for example, the Mexican Fine Arts Centre Museum where visitors are guided through an exhibition of work by Mexican artists.

The best thing about this attraction is the well-networked organization and partnership development with community groups, and its capacity to expose visitors to diverse cultural interactions beyond the mainstream.

SUB-CULTURAL PRODUCTS (EG GAY TOURISM PRODUCTS)

There is a surprisingly greater diversity in the US than here, of products that feature alternative cultural perspectives, or cater to sub-cultures – the stuff that reflects a radical departure from tourism, as we know it. For example, gay tourism destination guides, Voodoo tours and so on.

WALKING MARY’S TOUR OF BISBEE
Walking Mary’s Tour of Bisbee is alternative in the sense that it presents to the visitor a side of American life which many would like to ignore, namely the passage of illegal immigrants from Mexico, sometimes to their death in the Arizona desert.

Again, like the Harlem Heritage Tours, this is not a high profile, high earning cultural tourism enterprise. In fact it’s not an enterprise at all and to go on the tour you are actually screened, and it is not a straightforward matter to contact the tour guide. There is no charge for the tour but you can make a donation. Walking Mary is a local resident of a border town in Arizona who has taken on the frowned upon task of showing visitors the plight of illegal immigrants – of which over a thousand cross the border each night, hide in desert trenches by day and mostly get transported back by the Border Patrol soon after being caught.

The tour is actually a tour of Bisbee and the culture of a once prosperous mining and union town, turned toxic dump, and then colonised by aging hippies - who actually saved the town from dying in the sixties. The town itself has some great community, cultural and heritage assets, but …let’s put it this way, if you really want to risk arrest and go to the border to see the real tragedy for yourself, Walking Mary won’t stop you. This is as real as it gets. I include this example to show that this kind of tourism is happening and may not seem viable yet but there is definitely a market out there for it, and it illustrates what I think Alvin Rosenbaum is talking about when he says it’s “The End of Tourism as We Know It”.

BEST PRACTICE

The Partners have promoted best practice by profiling products around the country and they’ve used several indicators. But the key indicator I believe comes from this statement:

"Visitors come not just to encounter a place or a tradition, but to interact with the living stewards” (Partners in Tourism, Culture and Commerce 1997).

The big bonus falling out of the US process has been that dealing with contemporary or ‘living cultures’ has more and more become a chief focus of the innovative work – and this is where the arts will play an increasing role. Because despite the fact that regarding all tourism as cultural tourism has mutual benefits for all niches (ie., it allows for many more people to be involved and products to be marketed, adding value to the tourism industry as a whole), policy makers have rightly recognized that the one thing that really makes the experience of ‘monument visiting’ different from one country to the next, is the living cultures that surround these material assets. The same goes for white-water rafting or hiking. You can do these activities all over the world, but you can’t really ride in a New York cab anywhere else but New York.

Hence the new focus on local product development and marketing directly involving communities, and the creation of extensions to ‘traditional’ tourism activities.

Best practice products, to me, are those that facilitate genuine interactivity and also truly represent the special character of a place.

Attractions or products at what I call the ‘arts end’ of cultural tourism provide the best examples because they have the potential to move beyond ‘interpretation’ as a purely informative or documentary activity, to presentations that have an aesthetic or interactive feature. These might be arts based or local community interactive products that address the contemporary or historical human and social conditions related to the location or subject - materials that emphasise the aesthetic, ethnocultural or socio-cultural dimensions. They might be products whose process of creation is the most important aspect. I like to call them Cultural Interpretative Products – because for me they have a broader agenda than your average display.

Unfortunately in the US, as in Australia, Cultural Interpretative Products are hard to find (however in the US there are at least some specifically arts based CHT enterprises, like the Impressionist Art Trail in Connecticut). There are many good ‘Interpretative Products’ that are artistically and creatively produced, but their purpose is usually only educational or demonstrative. On the other hand, there are countless arts products that – unless they’re packaged that way – don’t actually speak to the aim of representing the “special character of a place”, usually because they were not specifically designed to do so. I’m thinking here of examples like the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) that don’t say anything about New York, (“except look how much cultural capital we have!”).

Examples that combine the following broad features are, from my point of view, what the arts sector provides at the best practice end of cultural tourism. (I have developed a model for Cultural Interpretative Products on this basis):

• High artistic values/integrity; and
• High level of community ownership or involvement in the production; and
• High tourism success/visitor frequency.

The key factors are:

• Interactivity
  ~ physical/intellectual/emotional
  ~ reducing barriers (increasing access) between hosts/visitors
  ~ where appropriate and where both host community and visitors benefit
• Diversity
  ~ of the type of interaction
  ~ of host community participation
  ~ tapping a range of potential interest groups (diverse visitors)
• Authenticity
  ~ of the product (artistic integrity)
  ~ of the interaction itself (authentic context)
  ~ in marketing (ie., selling message)
• Marketability (& Manageability)
  ~ of the interaction, and the product’s aesthetic qualities

Product development using such criteria does not need to be limited to culture or heritage but might also be applied to aesthetic interpretation in other tourism niches (eg., eco-tourism, agri-tourism).

These kinds of attractions, I believe, are at the cutting edge of cultural tourism – a cultural tourism that strives to generate meaningful cultural interaction and awareness; a cultural tourism that works hand in hand with diverse community interests.

There are of course many good community based arts and cultural development projects to point to in the US, but this activity is similar to Australia. If anything, because of the work of organizations like the Australia Council (particularly the CCDB and ATSIAB) we are probably a little more advanced in this area. But the difference is that in the US much of this type of community based activity is happening in a concerted framework focused on cultural tourism. There is only one program in Australia (run by Arts South Australia) that specifically focuses on funding artists to work on cultural tourism product, whereas there are many, many more and better developed support programs in the US.

THE PROGRAMS

A best practice approach to product development requires serious program support. In the last five years in particular, programs have flourished across the US. Much of this activity has come as a result of the Partners in Tourism initiative, which we should look at a little closer:

NATIONAL PROGRAMS: THE PARTNERS IN TOURISM INITIATIVE
Partners in Tourism is a coalition of national associations and federal agencies representing a broad spectrum of arts, humanities and heritage organizations throughout the country. Here are the Australian equivalents…

Partners in Tourism	Australian Equivalent
National Endowment for the Arts	Australia Council
American Association of Museums	Museums Australia
Americans for the Arts	NAVA, CANs, Arts Councils, Artsworkers Alliance etc
National Assembly of State Arts Agencies	SAFAs/Cultural Ministers Council
National Trust for Historic Preservation	Aus Heritage Commission/Aus Council of National Trusts
Travel Industry Association	Australian Tourist Commission/s
Dept. Commerce/Tourism Industries	Sport & Tourism Departments/State Development etc.

The partners’ purpose is to advance the role of culture and heritage in national, state and local travel and tourism policies. Acting on behalf of the Partners in 1996 the American Association of Museums organized and implemented a series of regional cultural tourism leadership forums. The basic premise of these forums was that cultural tourism could only succeed when leadership of cultural, commercial, and government entities engage in creative dialogue about critical issues. Through these forums four major priorities were identified:

• Creating sustainable and fruitful partnerships among the various stakeholders of cultural tourism;
• Preserving cultural integrity, remaining true to the authentic story being told, and being faithful to the cultural organisation’s mission;
• Involving the community in the cultural tourism development process; and
• Acquiring credible and consistent research demonstrating the social and economic impact of cultural tourism.

The forums focused on bringing together stakeholders with policy and planning capabilities that would work best at the local level. Since then, Conventions and Visitors Bureaus (CVBs) and local arts agencies have taken on a major role in both developing and marketing cultural tourism products as well as employing dedicated cultural heritage tourism officers across many states.

The process has typically worked like this: NASAA acts as a broker between State Tourism Boards and State Arts Agencies to develop CHT programs eg., California Cultures Edge was funded from a grant by the NEA to NASAA and devolved to the California Arts Council. (The point is: We have similar structures in Australia and the process could work in a similar way.)

The Partners have since been promoting the following five principles across the US to achieve their objective:

Five principles for successful and sustainable cultural heritage tourism:

• Focus on authenticity and quality
• Preserve and protect resources
• Make sites come alive
• Find the fit between the community and tourism
• Collaborate

What kinds of programs have developed as a result? The explosion of initiatives resulting from the common agenda developed largely by the Partners in Tourism include the development of:

• A Sample of the Range of US Activities
• Resources (how-to manuals and nation-wide workshops)
• Publications and Promotional Materials (advertorials, videos, guides, brochures, studio tours/maps)
• Cultural Tourism Plans (in many states and at the local level)
• Grants programs and other funding strategies targeting the common agenda from all sectors
• Dedicated Cultural Heritage Tourism positions in Convention and Visitors Bureaus
• National Best Practice (product and program) profiling
• Targeted access initiatives (Arts Buses, Trolley Tours)
• Awards (eg., the Odyssey Awards)

(Underlined are areas where some work has been done in Australia. But by comparison, this has been very limited in scale and impact. I only mention this to show that we at least have identified some areas in common and we could do much more):

Looking across the spectrum of activities, a clear picture appears of different stages of development – from cultural mapping and asset identification to enhancing existing products (incorporating the ‘five principles’ mentioned earlier), to identifying best practice and innovation in both product development and program delivery. The positive structural changes are reflected in the establishment of multilevel funding programs, dedicated staff positions, and the increasing number of mainly state based agencies developing Cultural Tourism Plans (See: Kentucky, Wisconsin). But equally, there is no indication of resistance at the very local level – quite the contrary - as shown by the amount of small town participation and small venture development. An added bonus for the arts and artists has been access to more funding and more profiling opportunities.

CITY/STATE BASED PROGRAMS, PARTNERSHIPS & INITIATIVES
Here’s a typical program operating at the local level and an example of the kind of partnerships that have developed. For the past six years the San Francisco Convention and Visitor’s Bureau and the Grants for the Arts Program of the San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund have operated a cultural tourism department with a fulltime cultural tourism manager. The program’s purpose is to introduce visitors to San Francisco’s cultural community, thus increasing hotel occupancy, attendance at arts events, and tourism revenues in the city. In recent years, San Diego, New Orleans and Los Angeles have initiated similar positions and programs as well. San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego then developed the highly successful marketing campaign: California Cultures Edge.

Numerous state and local funding program examples, including: Arts and Business Council Inc (New York).

Model cultural tourism plan examples: Kentucky, Missouri and many other state arts councils.

MARKETING PROGRAMS
Interestingly, all US tourism success stories are being profiled and promoted together – blurring the boundaries between the tourism niches, in a spirit of cooperative marketing that has created widespread interest. Cities and regional areas alike appear to be receiving appropriately selective attention. Again, this is evidence of real multi-level partnership development rather than a token commitment to the process embarked upon by the Partners in Tourism.

CALIFORNIA - CALIFORNIA'S CULTURE'S EDGE
A cooperative marketing campaign conceived and implemented by the California Cultural Tourism Coalition California - California's Culture's Edge has achieved one of the most significant returns of any American Express destination marketing program to date. Fifty-eight percent of the 200,000 selected American Express card member households that received a California, Culture's Edge travel planner responded by making a trip to California and spending a $154.6 million.

The results of this campaign reinforce current research showing the significant impact that cultural attractions and events have on a visitor's choice of travel destination. The campaign mailed 950,000 travel planners to targeted consumers and travel agents and another 200,000 to American Express card member households in key feeder markets. Six months after the mailing, 115,000 American Express card members had travelled to California and spent almost $155 million, as tracked by American Express.

Launched in March 1998, the California, Culture's Edge travel planner was built around thirteen ethnic and cultural-themed itineraries focusing on Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco. Launched in 1998, California Culture's Edge was catalysed in part by the National Endowment for the Arts and the California Arts Council, which provided some of the initial seed money to the California Cultural Tourism Coalition to develop these itineraries.

So to sum up, it is clear that US Cultural Tourism is characterised by:

• local entrepreneurship being encouraged everywhere and to the benefit of communities and artists;
• corporate sector and government partnerships that are intent on producing economic and community development outcomes without just focusing on the mainstream experience; and
• a genuine coopting of the arts sector in particular as a lead agent in facilitating the product development and marketing.

CONCLUSION

What Can We Learn From All This?
Australia differs from America in many ways, not least in the size of our domestic tourism markets. But a little lateral thinking and leadership would go a long way.

We do have similar infrastructure and we could easily blueprint some useful aspects of the American model. The key lesson is that it requires a national thrust rather than erratic tugs from the States. We need to develop a genuine broad based agenda for cultural tourism and implement a workable infrastructure and funding support base. We need real private sector involvement and we need a cooperative national framework to match our best expertise with our most underdeveloped products. We need the best possible profiling and marketing of products across state boundaries – where travellers go! But most of all we need to expand our vision of what the ‘product’ is – and we need to target artists working in communities to develop it!

To do this we need to revisit the roadmap. If cultural tourism is not approached here with the same kind of intellectual rigor and cooperation that it has in the US, it may never deliver on its real potentials. In the US, it is the tourism industry – to its credit – that has taken stock of this, and made the necessary shifts, allowing peak arts bodies to be equal partners as architects and brokers. When the Partners in Tourism held conferences and initiated forums to re-invent their tourism industry, they asked intellectuals and artists to come along and speak. Writer Garrison Keillor, back in 1995 had this to say:

“We need to think about cultural tourism because really there is no other kind of tourism. It’s what tourism is…People don’t come to America for our airports, people don’t come to America for our hotels, or the recreation facilities…. They come for our culture: high culture, low culture, middle culture, right, left, real or imagined – they come here to see America.”

Like the Americans, we could benefit from re-thinking our priorities, taking a wider perspective, and being prepared to re-imagine the road ahead. We need to take two steps back and make sure we are doing everything we can to nurture a cultural rendition that is not fake or superficial or mediocre. To do this we need to show the whole picture, rather than just build monuments, edifices and attractions that are thinly disguised theme parks!

What Does This Mean For The New Museum?
The first challenge is for this sector to help cultural tourism grow in Australia as it has overseas – because frankly, it needs the audience. And the second challenge is to accept that the New Museum is increasingly in competition with all the earlier mentioned cultural products, for the attention of the cultural tourist. The challenge here is to draw ‘The New Museum’ not into ‘the theme park’, but into the spaces and places that people inhabit. What does this mean? It means that whether the museum is an enclosed space or an outdoor site, it needs to present more than just a clinical rendition of the subject matter. And yet it has to be authentic. You need to walk out of there saying what the proverbial Theatre reviewer said: “I laughed, I cried”!

Of course many museums around the world already do this to varying extents. There have been some excellently entertaining exhibits in many Australian museums. And there are museums like the Holocaust Museum in Washington, for example, which presents state of the art displays that are ingeniously designed: they are extremely varied, dynamic, and inventive in drawing out the whole catastrophe.

But for all that, there is still something missing here, and it has to do with the subliminal but tangible sense of separation between the “presentation” and the subject – which is very often ‘the community’ (original or descendant). It’s a sense of separation I didn’t feel so much at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum or at The Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation Museum in North Carolina, or at the Mexican American Museum in Chicago– all of which were much lower budget, less high-tech experiences than the Holocaust museum.

What these museums have in common is a very tangible connection with a community – and I don’t really know why that is not there at the Holocaust Museum: it should be. But perhaps the answer is in the neighbourhood tours mentioned earlier.

Maybe the New Museum needs to be about more than a learning activity, more than a history or science lesson, more than entertainment and more than a shrine. Maybe there’s an experiential aspect that just can’t be completely fabricated, a sense of the unexpected and the unpredictable. I believe it is the arts that can provide this…I’m talking about artists, not technicians and interior designers. For me, the New Museum needs to do two things:

• actively engage with cultural tourism; and
• look more to the artist working in the community, than to the display makers to interpret the product, because the Museum’s real job is to make us really understand ourselves “… the real you”.

It’s a huge responsibility. Good luck. Thank you.