The role of artists in place branding: A case study

: Tuula Mittilä, Tanja Lepistö

Publisher: Macmillan Publishers Ltd.

: 2013

: Place Branding and Public Diplomacy

: 9

: 3

: 143

: 153

: 11

Rural tourism has a pivotal role in keeping the countryside alive in the changing industrial and technological urbanized world. Constructing a rural place identity, the starting point of matketing, is the focus of this article. The authors studied the role of one stakeholder group, namely artists, in the context of place identity construction of an old rural Finnish ironworks village. The results indicate that artists are extremely important to the construction of the identity of a place. Their roles unfold as stories, artifacts and atmosphere as well as entrepreneurs. In the future, these direct and indirect roles should better be taken into consideration in the process of identity construction of a place.