Murals and Tourism ― Heritage, Politics and Identity

Around the world, visitors are drawn to visit murals painted on walls that express something about the politics, heritage and identity of the locations being visited. In some cases, murals created for political purposes, to express a particular viewpoint, become a point of interest for visitors, as with the murals of Belfast, Northern Ireland. In Northern Ireland, it could be said that the political murals are part of ‘dark’ or political tourism and are also reflective of the politics of community heritage. In other cases, murals have been painted to stimulate local economic development through tourism, as reflected in Canada by murals projects in Chemainus, British Columbia. In some situations, the murals painted for political purposes are part of peace processes. These political murals at sites of conflict illustrate the transition by depicting a more secular message, and - bundled and packaged as tourism products - are being employed as instruments of economic development. This volume focuses on this latter type of mural and looks at visits to political murals that are either evolving or have transitioned as instruments of politics, heritage and identity, with increasingly significant importance for tourism. In this interdisciplinary and highly international volume comprising 12 chapters, the diverse messaging of murals, their production, interpretation, marketing and - in some cases - destruction is explored. Heritage asset, legacy leftover, contested art space: the book argues that the mural is more than a simple tourist attraction or accidental aspect of tourism material culture.

Jonathan Skinner is Reader in Social Anthropology in the Department of Life Sciences, University of Roehampton, UK.

Lee Jolliffe is Professor of Tourism in the Faculty of Business at the University of New Brunswick, Canada.