Hermínia Sol, Instituto Politécnico de Tomar

Cláudia Carvalho, Centro de Estudos Sociais UC

[ Portugal ]

 

CULTURAL MAPPING AS A REGENERATION TOOL FOR SPARSELY-POPULATED REGIONS

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ABSTRACT:

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Demographic sparsity poses major challenges to policy makers, essential service providers, as well as economic and cultural activity actors alike. Often equated with remoteness, rurality and, in certain cases, with harsh climate conditions these regions are frequently perceived as unattractive. This unattractiveness furthers their peripheral status and weakens their economic power. The fact that remoteness has a negative connotation prevents people, in general, from understanding that remoteness is not only about challenges, but also about opportunities. Those opportunities may emerge from a process of cultural mapping that can evaluate a community’s uniqueness and strengths. In other words, periphery can also be about exquisite landscape and history, stories of resilience, as well as exceptional fauna and flora. Therefore, cultural mapping in sparsely populated regions can help promote local capital empowerment and, thus, contribute to a region’s regeneration. As an example of this ambitious premise, two ongoing cultural related projects -- ARTERIA and MOVTOUR (with the activity Journeying the Screen) -- will be used to illustrate an attempt to achieve this goal.