(Re)creating heritage: artistic creation as cultural placemaking

Countless international symposiums, as well as research and/or artistic projects have already been devoted to exploring the potentialities, for instance, in the cross-fertilization between artistic creation and heritage education. Moreover, contemporary artists are often proposed as mediators, engaging with local communities, and, thus, contributing to multiple (political) agendas; from the promotion of cultural participation to cultural placemaking. Heritage-based artistic residencies are, in fact, a growing trend internationally. Considering Portuguese reality, the preliminary results of an inquiry conducted in 2020, as part of the author’s on-going doctoral project, (Re)creating Heritage, pointed to an increase in intensity of this type of initiatives in recent years. Furthermore, the inquiry revealed, on one hand, a high degree of heterogeneity amongst the promoters – including a growing number of municipalities and other public institutions – and, on the other, a high degree of interdisciplinarity amongst the participants, comprising (artistic) practices bordering creative industries. In this paper, we focus on three examples of Portuguese artist-in-residence programs that actively engage artists, designers, and architects in (re)interpreting traditional crafts, some in close articulation with cultural tourism projects. The proposed examples will inspire a broader discussion, around the use(s) of heritage in artistic creation, as part of (cultural) placemaking strategies, and, on the other way around, the impact of artistic creation and/as (cultural) tourism, in heritage making.