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TOURISM&CREATIVE INDUSTRY WORKSHOP
Sustainable tourism, cultural tourism, creative tourism, culinary tourism, heritage & tourism
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School of Outdoor Recreation, Parks and Tourism
Lakehead University
Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada
rkoster@lakeheadu.ca
Murals for Tourism Development:
A Canadian Perspective
Koster, R.L.
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Keywords:
mural tourism, framework, success, best practices, Canada.
Mural development occurs for a variety of reasons, generally categorized
by their purpose for development in one of four categories (public
art, youth art commu-nity beautification and tourism). In Canada,
the production of murals has expanded considerably since the early
1990s (33 communities) to the present, with over 161 communities
developing murals for one of these reasons. The focus of this presenta-
tion is to examine the development of murals as tourism products for
economic devel-opment. Expanding on the initial analysis conducted
in 2000 (Koster, 2008), this presentation examines the state of mural
development in rural areas of Canada, illus-trating the critical factors
associated with successful mural tourism development. Utilizing the
Community Economic Development framework for Tourism Develop-
ment in Rural areas (Koster & Lemelin 2013) as the structure of analysis,
it is clear that the level of embeddedness of the murals within the culture
of the community, the governance structures and leadership context, and
the amount and quality of institu-tional thickness within the community
and region are critical to successful outcomes for communities wishing
to pursue murals as a tourism attraction. In addition, the traditional
ways of measuring success (for example, the number of visitors, tourism
receipts and jobs generated) in mural development for rural areas is
not appropriate; instead, the intended purpose of the mural project
(community beautification or tour-ism related) must be considered