Field guideLocal culture · tourism4 September 2026

How to build a tourism campaign around local culture

Local culture is not a visual library for a destination campaign. It is a set of people, places, practices, memories, and relationships. The work is to understand that system, then make a fair invitation into it.

A Countercult Studios guide for destination teams and place-based organisations.

Do the research before the moodboard

Start by asking who is already making the place interesting. Look for artists, independent venues, community archives, food projects, markets, producers, makers, radio stations, festivals, local historians, and people who connect several of those worlds.

This is not a hunt for the most photogenic answer. It is a way to understand the relationships that give a place its texture. A cultural map should show context and boundaries as well as public points of interest. Some places want visitors. Some want support without publicity. Some need a conversation before they can decide.

Five rules for a local culture campaign

1. Commission, do not decorate. Give local operators a defined role in the idea, the making, or the hosting of the work. If they only appear in the imagery, the campaign is borrowing credibility rather than building a relationship.
2. Make the offer specific. Share the client, purpose, audience, timeline, fee, usage, credit, and decision process. People cannot give meaningful consent to a vague request for “authentic local content.”
3. Protect what should stay protected. A public profile does not mean open access. Keep private addresses, fragile spaces, and sensitive community knowledge out of the campaign unless the people involved have actively agreed.
4. Let local partners change the brief. If every recommendation is treated as a production detail, the research is decorative. The people closest to the place should be able to challenge the route, audience, timing, language, and promised experience.
5. Leave something useful behind. That might be paid work, a better archive, a new audience for a local programme, skills, equipment, a repeatable route, or a clearer case for future funding. Decide what the afterlife is before launch.

Build a visitor experience, not just a destination story

A campaign becomes more credible when people can do something with it. That could be a paid workshop, a cultural route, a seasonal programme, a studio visit, a hosted meal, a small exhibition, or a local archive that helps visitors understand where they are.

The format should come from the place and the partners. An artist-led workshop is not automatically better than a map, and a map is not automatically better than a festival. The useful question is whether the public experience gives people a respectful way to meet the culture being described.

What not to promise

Do not promise “untouched,” “undiscovered,” or “authentic” as if a place exists for an outside audience to find. Those words often erase the people already living, working, organising, and disagreeing there.

Do not promise that one campaign will solve local economic pressure, preserve a tradition, or make every resident feel represented. Be clear about the scope. A good campaign can direct attention and money. It cannot replace local policy, infrastructure, or long-term care.

The strongest local culture campaign gives people a role, a fee, and a reason to keep going.

This piece was informed by Shona Neary’s writing, conversations, and thinking around independent culture, artists, and place.

editorial process: Our Journals are pulled from our writings over the years to get information out as quickly and as widely as possible, and to get to what matters: finding each other and claiming our seat in the circular economy. Some ideas overlap between Shona Neary's work on cultural infrastructure and their artist practice as Sketchy Shona. AI is a tool for infrastructure, not for creating Journal writing or artists' work. We welcome original reporting and pitches from journalists and independent publishers.