Building Island Communities of Practice for Achieving Local Sustainable Cultural Tourism Objectives

The prevalence of a series of megatrends and challenges such as climate change, overtourism and health crisis, have demonstrated even more the necessity to shift from the current mass and overcrowded, spatially concentrated tourism models to less crowded, more spatially dispersed, and secure environments. This tendency pushed island destinations to rethink their tourism profiles. Nonetheless, the majority of island communities depend on tourism for their economic well-being, which requires rethinking the highly appreciated island tourism destinations’ strategies towards more sustainable models. According to European policies and academics, alternative forms of tourism, such as cultural tourism, seem to be the solution for achieving this objective, also by including participatory practises in local communities. Starting from these considerations, this work presents the ongoing ISL project (Forming interdisciplinary Island Communities of Practice operating for sustainable cultural tourIsm models). This paper describes a general overview of the ISL Project which purpose is to offer innovative high quality participatory tools to (i) promote awareness and mobilise local communities and stakeholders on their cultural identity, cultural awareness and their social and historical heritage and (ii) support social and territorial cohesion of island communities at a local and trans-island/transnational level by promoting participatory cultural tourism schemes.