Art Gallery Community Cafe: Visualizing a Culture for Strangers

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Thursday, November 27th, 2014
7:00 PM to 8:00 PM

The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria’s exhibit Visualizing a Culture for Strangers presents an opportunity for a discussion of the role of authenticity in art, and how that plays a role in the telling of a community’s story through cultural tourism. How important is it for art to honestly reflect the reality of the host community? How important is it for artists in the host community to have the autonomy to control the kind of works they produce? Must we cater to the whims of the tourist trade, or are there other ways to ‘visualize our culture for strangers’?

These are among the questions for a Community Cafe workshop, when Royal Roads University associate tourism professor Bruce Whyte will discuss work he’s currently undertaking on these issues for his doctorate, and consider these questions through the lens of projects and initiatives in cultural tourism in BC he’s has been involved with over the past two decades as a tourism planner.

Participants in this Community Cafe should come prepared to learn a little about the ways art fits into the world of tourism, and to share a lot of their own thoughts and opinions on the important questions raised by the issues of art, authenticity and cultural tourism.

Bruce Whyte is an associate faculty member in the School of Tourism and Hospitality Management at Royal Roads University and is a Senior Tourism Development Officer, Tourism Branch, with the British Columbia Ministry of Jobs, Tourism and Skills Training. A former newspaper journalist with more than 20 years’ tourism development experience in government and as a consultant, Bruce is exploring tourism authenticity issues with Leeds Metropolitan University’s Centre for Tourism and Cultural Change as a PhD candidate. Bruce instructs Sustainable Tourism and Tourism Product Development at Royal Roads University, and was editor/lead author for the Cultural and Heritage Tourism Development, Tourism Business Essentials guide, produced through Destination British Columbia, and the bilingual national publication, Culture & Heritage Tourism: A Guidebook for Community Champions, published by the Federal-Provincial-Territorial Ministers of Culture and Heritage.

Space is limited. Admission 5-9pm courtesy of ScotiaMcLeod.