Issue and argument:

Scene 1: Venice. Ext. outer space. Middle of the night.
Frank emerges onto a Venetian rooftop clad in mismatched pyjamas. The moon casts an ethereal glow over the labyrinthine cityscape, illuminating the ancient terracotta rooftops. He moves cautiously along the uneven tiles, while the camera captures his every move as he navigates the unfamiliar terrain, heightening the tension. With each precarious step, the audience feels his unease, amplified by the stunning aerial views of Venice's iconic architecture and shimmering canals below. Along the way, Frank encounters a series of obstacles—a chimney he needs to climb over, a gap he must leap across, and narrow pathways that require acrobatic manoeuvring. His actions are a mix of determination and bewildered improvisation, making for a comically entertaining spectacle against the picturesque backdrop of Venice's skyline. In accordance with his role in Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s “The Tourist” (2010), his vulnerability and the absurdity of his situation create a contrast against the elegance and grandeur of the Venetian scenery.

Scene 2: Venice. Ext. outer space. Middle of the night.
The scene opens with a shot of the Bridge of Sighs, shrouded in mist. A parade of sleek gondolas emerges from the fog, delivering Ethan Hunt and his team to their destination: the Doge’s Palace. An aerial shot shows its facade animated by an intricate play of lights, before offering a glimpse of the lavish, decadent party taking place within its courtyard. The camera follows Ethan’s entrance, delving into a world of spotlights and dark corners, where a mass of unknown bodies moves to the sound of music. Pretty soon, our protagonists are forced to flee through the candle–lit corridors of the palace, and out into the Venetian night. Ethan and Grace are chased through the misty city. Dark, mysterious, and almost unwelcoming to strangers, Venice becomes one giant escape room for Christopher McQuarrie’s “Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning - Part 1" (2023), as the actors run around its street as if on a dangerous playground.

These two vignettes can be inserted within a bigger, older trajectory. A quick montage of imaginaries from Canaletto's 18th-century proto-postcards to today's audiovisual productions, passing through Ruskin and Mann as well as the romantic atmosphere of films such as “Venezia, la luna e tu” (1958) reveals a shift: once the perfect setting for languid stories of love and/or despair, the city now offers a background to fast-paced mysteries and action-filled tales. Even within this shift, though, one tenet holds: the Creative and Cultural Industries (CCIs) play a pivotal role in shaping the perception and storytelling of locales. However, this a double-edged sword: while garnering recognition and fascination for these destinations, it concurrently risks perpetuating stereotypes. These, while potentially heightening the place's allure, may oversimplify or distort its true essence. This paper seeks to delve into the role of CCIs in shaping consumer behaviour in tourist sites, exploring how stereotypes mediated through artistic representations impact visitors’ experiences.

Theoretical background:

Stereotypes are widely studied in social psychology, sociology, and related fields. They relate to cognitive schemas or mental constructs that individuals form about objects, people, or places (Fiske & Taylor, 2013). Various mediums like literature, radio, television, newspapers, the internet, films, plays, opera, music, and photographs can portray cities in diverse ways through images, narratives, and discourses (Boland, 2008). Avraham (2000) highlights how these ingrained images become part of a city's symbolic identity. These portrayals can evolve and vary over time (Hall, 2003), sometimes leading to stereotyped conceptions that carry both positive and negative implications. Stereotypes can serve as cognitive shortcuts, helping individuals process information, shape expectations, guide behaviour, and simplify our categorization of the world (Adler-Nissen, 2014). Conversely, stereotypes can also result in bias, discrimination, prejudice, and overgeneralizations about countries and cultures, regardless of their true nature (Avraham, 2020).

Stereotyping in tourism has deep roots in the cultural construction of destinations. The global expansion of tourism in the 1980s and 1990s created a new focus on efficiency, product development, and destination branding (Morgan et al., 2018). In response, assessments of consumer satisfaction emerged (Calantone & Mazenec, 1991), intensifying the tendency to define a place by exaggerating or even inventing a few of its features. This quest for authenticity often turns into a contrived imitation of the original experience, meticulously shaped to satisfy tourists' preferences. This problem is closely tied to "commoditization" (Greenwood, 1977), where elements of local life become tourist attractions, losing their inherent value (Cohen, 1988). This process can negatively impact residents' lives by causing an unsustainable surge in tourism, potentially diminishing local identity and self-worth in tourist destinations. Residents may feel they exist mainly to cater to tourists' needs and desires (Duignan et al., 2022). This perception can reinforce negative stereotypes of locals as subordinates, existing solely to serve tourists. This emphasises the need for strategies to cope with these stigmas and stereotypes are crucial (Adler-Nissen, 2014; Walters & Mair, 2012). CCIs can perpetuate stereotypes through media such as images, videos, films, travel documentaries, and blogs. However, they also have the potential to deconstruct these stereotypes by promoting new, sustainable ideas for heritage appreciation.

Methodology

This paper explores the role of stereotypes in shaping tourism dynamics, using Venice as a case study. It proposes a participatory video lab, led by an artist, as a tool to reshape city images through CCIs and participant perspectives. Participants were purposely chosen among local residents to explore possible discrepancies between locals’ and tourists’ views of the city. This led to the development of a video lab prototype, examined in this research through an ethnographic approach. As such, the primary goal of this paper is to present a toolkit for de-stereotypization, rooted in artistic intervention and participatory processes. This method was first tried out in Venice, with the aim of engaging citizens in collaborative value creation through video making. The process is approached as "artistic research", which includes creating an artefact using artistic or arts-based methods to make discoveries (Bell, 2019; Leavy, 2009).

In the spring of 2023, we invited people to join a participatory video lab focused on portraying the city of Venice. This opportunity was only open to those living or working permanently in Venice. The lab was led by a video maker and film director. Participants were taught video-making techniques and asked to reflect on both the stereotypical images of the city and narrative techniques. The goal was to understand the perspectives of locals, ascertain whether stereotypes equally affected residents and visitors, and explore the possibility of deconstructing them.

The role of CCIs was crucial in the process. Video was chosen as the artistic medium because of its value in uniting individuals and cultures and stimulating creative thinking and subsequent innovation. The video's purpose is to foster dialogue and cultivate a sense of community that transcends differences. This becomes feasible when we acknowledge that "what the arts most offer and what traditional academic writing most fails to accomplish is resonance" (Leavy, 2009, p. ix). The video is designed to combine an intellectual and a visceral engagement with the subject (Pullen & Vachhani, 2021), facilitating a different form of "understanding" or "aesthetic knowledge" (Taylor & Hansen, 2005, p. 1214) regarding leadership, gender, and language within organisations. This approach recognizes the intricacy of society and people's potential for innovation, focusing on unifying varied perspectives to surpass preconceived ideas.

In order to gain a comprehensive understanding, researchers from the University actively participated in the video lab, immersing themselves in all the activities, and even independently creating their own videos. The analysis centres on the workshop, encompassing all stages, participant interactions, and feedback received. An analysis of the resulting videos is also included, along with the response of the public and local authorities following the action's presentation.

Takeaway and results:

The result of the video lab was a short film based on the individual videos. The lab itself, the dynamics characterising it, the final product, and the feedback of participants and locals gave us a new understanding of the potential contribution of CCIs to sustainable tourism. By relating their outlooks and encounters, the participants succeeded in emphasising various aspects of the city, which are often overlooked or misunderstood. The coral structure highlighted the diverse contributions arising from the whole workshop process. The lab contributed to a more authentic and nuanced understanding of the city, serving as a powerful tool to challenge preconceived notions: this lays the foundations to make the workshop a repeatable model in other tourist destinations suffering the same challenges as Venice.

This project serves as a testament to the power of artistic expression and collaboration in reshaping narratives and promoting a more inclusive and authentic representation of a place. This addresses the problem of over-tourism by inserting itself into the dynamics of stereotype construction by contributing to the reimagining of a place through a participatory process of creation. It can be seen as a new methodology that can involve artistic means and language and a creative approach to research.

References

A complete list of references is available upon request.