Speakers
Description
The relationship between culture and tourism has been increasingly pivotal in shaping urban development and academic discussion within tourism literature (Richards, 2018). The ‘Bilbao Effect’ triggered and amplified a segment of this growing debate specifically focusing on art and tourism (Franklin, 2018) and consolidated a ‘ubiquitous narrative among urban decision makers’ (Ponzini, 2010). While the policy transfer process and adapted replication of the model linking art and tourism in post-industrial cities have been widely discussed (Gonzalez, 2011; Giordano and Ong, 2017), the strategic and policy frameworks guiding local implementations remain mostly unclear. The same goes for the long-term impact of policy-stimulated contemporary art initiatives on tourism development beyond the Bilbao case (Franklin, 2016).
The article explores the relationship between contemporary art and tourism within urban development strategies and policies, using the former industrial city of Turin in Italy as a case study. The research examines Turin’s three Strategic Plans (issued in 2000, 2006 and 2015) to address how the Municipality integrated contemporary art into its tourism strategy. It further asks whether Turin developed specific policies to implement this strategy and which actions and programmes have been designed to operationalise it. Finally, the article evaluates these policies’ results through available data, underlining the lack thereof.
The paper employs a mixed-method approach to address the coherence between strategies, policies and results. It relies on qualitative content analysis of strategic plans, policies, reports and financial statements, semi-structured interviews with current and former policymakers and contemporary art professionals, and quantitative data from primary and secondary sources from the study period (1994 to 2023).
Findings highlight that Turin coherently implemented policies in response to strategic goals related to contemporary art and tourism. In this process, the City rejected a prescriptive implementation of policy models related to art tourism, developing and refining its policies in response to local conditions. Rather than building a flagship museum, Turin created and supported contemporary art institutions rooted in its history of artistic production and collecting. In terms of outcomes, these policies contributed to the consolidation and expansion of a rich ‘system’ of public and private contemporary art institutions and initiatives. Though it reached international visibility through its art fair – Artissima –, its development was curbed by internal competition, unstable coordination and decreasing funding from the City. The research crucially underscores Artissima’s organisational priority to attract and retain a small niche of collectors against the City’s broader tourism goals. It further reveals that the Municipality financially supported exhibition programmes and disregarded fostering new artistic productions against recommendations by local contemporary art researchers and practitioners. Finally, the lack or inconsistency of data on weekly tourism flows and contemporary art audiences prevented the City from exercising comprehensive monitoring.
References
Franklin, Adrian (2016) Journeys to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao: Towards a Revised Bilbao Effect. Annals of Tourism Research, 59, pp. 79-92.
Franklin, Adrian (2018) Art tourism: A new field for tourist studies. Tourist Studies, 18(4), pp. 399-416.
Gonzalez, Sara (2011) Bilbao and Barcelona "in Motion." How Urban Regeneration "Models" Travel and Mutate in the Global Flows of Policy Tourism. Urban Studies, 48, pp. 1397-1418.
Ponzini, Davide (2010) Bilbao effects and narrative defects. Cahiers de recherche du Programme Villes and territoires, 847.
Giordano, Elisabetta, and Ong, Chin-Ee (2017) Light festivals, policy mobilities and urban tourism. Tourism Geographies, 19(5), pp. 699–716.
| Keywords | contemporary art; art tourism; urban development |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | Yes |
