About
46
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Introduction
Meng Qu, Ph.D. (Creative Tourism Geographies), is an Associate Professor at the Hokkaido University Center for Advanced Tourism Studies; co-convener at Small Island Cultures Research Initiative (SICRI); Associate Editor at Journal of Folk, Knowledge, Place
; and Regional Editor at Event Management. His research draws from range of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives, especially from the fields of art tourism, creative geography, rural and island studies, with a focus on East Asia.
Current institution
Additional affiliations
April 2023 - March 2024
April 2021 - March 2023
October 2017 - present
Position
- Fellow
Description
- Seminar on Field Research for Area Studies Exercise in Information Literacy Class Sustainable Tourism Class Presentation Design Class
Editor roles
Education
April 2018 - March 2021
April 2016 - March 2018
August 2013 - March 2016
Publications
Publications (46)
The links between art events and sustainable development in rural contexts where revitalisation is pressing is becoming increasingly obvious. The village of Mitarai is an example of a small peripheral community in Japan faced with the impacts of depopulation, ageing and socio-economic decline. The urgency to stem further regression has seen art eme...
The Setouchi International Art Festival (SIAF), also known as the Setouchi Triennale, attempts to revitalize twelve remote islands with depopulating and aging communities by hosting an international art festival to promote tourism. Citing the presence of more than a million visitors during each festival iteration, SIAF officials and the media have...
The decline and socioeconomic stagnation of rural communities is a growing concern across the world. To promote community resilience, art-and creativity-based strategies are emerging as important means for rural revitalisation. This study adopts a neo-endogenous perspective to examine how socially engaged art can represent an effective tool for rev...
Small enterprises play a vital role in the drive toward sustainable tourism and in the sector more broadly, and their importance is accentuated in rural contexts. Beyond entrepreneurial spirit, what are the critical success factors that allow them to flourish? This study links tourism entrepreneurship, rural development and multi-stakeholder partne...
Rural communities throughout Japan, especially in the most peripheral regions, are experiencing rapid demographic, socio-economic, and environmental decline, with many facing the possibility of vanishing in the coming decades. To address these issues, the Japanese government has implemented various policy initiatives aimed at rural revitalisation,...
Japanese rural communities, especially in more peripheral regions, have been undergoing a dramatic demographic, socioeconomic, and ecological decline. This trend has mobilized research and policy efforts aimed at rural revitalization, including strategies aimed at attracting new residents and fostering local entrepreneurship (Dilley, Gkartzios, & O...
The role of new rural actors and entrepreneurial activities that utilize existing resources in new ways is increasingly portrayed as crucial for rural revitalization. Local gastronomy and food culture are often central to these processes, as they are tied to the identity and heritage of a place. What happens, however, when creative gastronomic expe...
Regenerative art tourism has emerged as a crucial link between art tourism and the regeneration/revitalization of peripheral communities, addressing issues of sustainability and local engagement in non-urban settings. While creative tourism and the creative class has been extensively studied in urban areas, the focus on rural revitalization strateg...
The impact of contemporary art on rural society has given life to a unique form of regional art and biennale/triennale tourism, characterised by a combination of socially engaged artistic encounters and endeavours to revitalise peripheral communities. Creative geography studies place significant emphasis on the role of art as a catalyst for both ae...
Although both arts education and community sustainability are very important topics for island communities, there is a dearth of academic research on the use of artistic activities to support sustainable island development. In this research, Osakikamijima, a depopulating Japanese island that the Japanese government is trying to rebrand as 'educatio...
Art tourism in rural destinations in Japan has received attention in both media and academia. Two major regional art festivals that are conducted in a regular cycle have triggered this boom in the 21 st century. However, art and cultural tourism have formed an important part of regional revitalization strategies for 30 years. This paper focuses on...
This symposium examines the relations between biopower, destination governance and tourism. Biopower, a Foucauldian concept, refers to political strategies based on humanity's biological features. In the simplest of terms, it is applied via biopolitical mandates that govern life of a given
As the global tourism industry attempts to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, small-scale, community-based regenerative tourism is bringing a creative transformation to declining neighborhoods and areas struggling to attract visitors. This case study focuses on a tour project that aims at regenerating a degraded suburban landscape in Hiroshima, Ja...
This paper examines how creativity-based social entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial networks in the context of small-scale rural art festivals can advance social and regional revitalization goals in peripheral island communities. This qualitative- and action-based research explores the effects of artistic activities on rural revitalization through...
The spatial structure of Bed and Breakfast (B&B) development plays a crucial role in promoting integrated urban–rural development. However, existing B&B research has predominantly focused on single large cities, neglecting to explore the spatial patterns of B&B development and their influencing factors from the perspective of urban–rural difference...
This study explores the emergence of the concepts of ‘art islands’ and ‘art archipelagos’ through the lens of creative geography, using cases of artistic rural revitalization in several island settlements around the world to further discuss the diverse impacts and complex social phenomena that the artistic and creative aura of the art islands and a...
The globalization of island studies has resulted in a greater recognition by island studies scholars of the need for more regional-based island research to encompass the diversity of island knowledge and experiences. Island research in East Asia provides examples of both English and native language perspectives across four distinct socio-cultural c...
Japanese peripheral rural communities have been undergoing a dramatic demographic and social- economic decline, with many facing the concrete threat of disappearing over the next decades. This condition is the outcome of decades of out-migration, lack of local employment opportunities and cuts in essential public services, a situation similar to th...
For rural and peripheral communities with long-established or growing links to tourism, the sector provides a vital fillip to more traditional economic activities, particularly primary production including agriculture, aquaculture, forestry, mining and allied extractive industries. As such, tourism often helps shift path dependencies of destination...
The Challenges of Island Studies includes six individual research articles and one panel discussion emerging from the international symposium titled “Prospects and Chal- lenges for Envisioning Regional Science for Small Islands” organized by the Research Institute for Islands and Sustainability (RIIS). In the first part, the individual research cha...
Understanding the past, current, and future trajectory of cultural tourism has been the major focus of both scholars and industry stakeholders engaged both in the culture and tourism sectors. As an influential scholar at the leading edge of cultural tourism and creative tourism studies, Richards’ Rethinking cultural tourism reviews the evolution of...
Small island communities in the Seto Inland Sea of Japan are undergoing a dramatic demographic and social-economic decline, with many facing the possibility of disappearing over the next decades. Like much of rural Japan, they are characterized by processes of aging and depopulation that result in a stagnating economy, the degradation of public ser...
For Japan's small island communities, already facing an existential demographic crisis due to their aging, shrinking populations, the 2020 coronavirus pandemic has proven to be a critical stress test. On islands with nascent tourism economies that have replaced declining primary and secondary industries, the situation has threatened to reverse prec...
Art’s social transformation as an interdisciplinary research topic inevitably faces issues caused by the limitations of each academic discipline and geographic context, ranging from ‘art’s rural revitalization’ in Japan, ‘art’s rural development/regeneration’ in China, to international theories about ‘creative ruralities and community place-making’...
Many small island destinations owe their spatial character to their entanglements with stakeholders involved in the arts. Space is the dynamic outcome of complex relational processes, which makes it impossible to identify a straightforward development path — including when it comes to the arts and tourism. Using assemblage thinking, we scrutinize t...
This is the third of a series of three International Creative Tourism Webinars in Spring 2021 within the umbrella of CREATOUR International. Conceived as “global conversations,” the webinars aim to create a platform for connecting research and practice in a spirit of co-learning.
As we look forward to “re-emergence” phases of social life and trave...
Aging, depopulation, and stagnation are serious problems for island communities in Japan’s Seto Inland Sea. As a result, many of these communities have seen their distinguishing features and cultural identities disappear, and some face outright extinction. The Setouchi Triennale strives to revitalize twelve of these islands through art festival tou...
Japan's nationwide population decrease, accompanied by its shrinking rural through aging, depopulation, and stagnation is projecting a global trend of rural shrinking on a big scale. Aging, depopulation, and stagnation are serious problems for island communities in Japan’s Seto Inland Sea. As a result, many of these communities have seen their dist...
The historical harbor village of Mitarai on the island of Osakishimojima epitomizes the problem of social decline in Japan's Seto Inland Sea. This research focuses on both Mitarai's local community and the wider society. Through conducting a year-long survey of island residents, this research highlights how villagers expect to overcome the challeng...
In order to understand the art island as a new type of socially engaged community revitalisation practice it is necessary to move beyond considering art simply as an aesthetic object. This article is informed by relational aesthetics, creative geography theories and with regard to three evaluation axes concerning artwork, community and new business...
This brief summarizes the preliminary findings of a research project on domestic urban-to-rural migration to the islands of the Seto Inland Sea, Japan. We focus on in-migrants who established small independent businesses on the islands, and particularly those engaged in tourism, creative industries and organic farming. The study explores the motiva...
Terrorist attacks in tourism places have unsurprisingly tended to cause widespread anxiety and fear for both travellers and host communities In Conflicts, Religion and Culture in Tourism, conflict, religion and culture coalesce with the inference that through religious and pilgrimage tourism, conflict resolution and better understanding between peo...
Aging, depopulation and stagnation are serious problems for the island communities of the Seto Inland Sea in Japan. The Setouchi International Art Festival (SIAF), engages with revitalizing twelve remote islands and their rural communities through art festival and tourism. The Triennale’s Director has claimed that the art festival has become a mode...
In India, organic farming is increasingly considered a promising way to increase the income of small-scale farmers, while at the same time protecting ecologically fragile areas. is is especially true for farmers in areas considered “marginal,” such as those in the Himalayan hill areas of the state of Uttarakhand. is research focuses on the current...
The article takes Japan Setouchi Triennale as A Case Study to anaylze and study its sustainable development from the aspect:"Contemporary Art Intervention", "Art Festival Tourism" and "Village Regional Regeneration". It also makes a survey on the problems existed in "art intervention in village" art tourism pattern to discuss the important role tha...
In the digital age, we create new technological forms and media artworks that de ne new relationships between the environment and us. Artists and actors are increasingly using their own mobile computing devices and AR to create artworks. When we experience an artwork in an “Augmented Space”, we can consider it as an interactive event. As a result,...
本文以日本濑户内海举办的当代艺术三年展为研究对象，从“当代艺术介入”“”艺术旅游“和”乡村地域再生“三个角度对其可持续发展进行分析与研究，并对当代艺术介入乡村的艺术观光模式存在的问题展开调研与分析，探讨了艺术节对当地社会的文化影响，指出该活动在促进当地可持续地域再生方面起到重要作用。
The article takes Japan Setouchi Triennale as A Case Study to anaylze and study its sustainable development from the aspect:"Contemporary Art Intervention", "Art Festival Tourism" and "Village Regional Rege...
