Community cultural development: Exploring the connections between collective art making, capacity building and sustainable community-based tourism

To avoid tourism becoming an extractive industry, communities must develop capacity to participate and assume ownership of decision-making processes for it. This article explores the connections among community-based cultural practices, individual and community capacity and sustainable tourism. Along with personal observation and review of relevant archival data, we conducted interviews with a sample of individuals from a community cultural development organization in a single industry town in Central Appalachia. Our case analysis suggested that Community Cultural Development methods can enhance community capacity and the sustainability of tourism by increasing residents' effective participation in decision-making, encouraging locals' partnership in, and ownership of, tourism projects and providing space for negotiating the tourist gaze in guest-host relationships.