Cultural Heritage Tourism

UPLIFT North Carolina

The Center’s partnership with UPLIFT North Carolina provides participatory workshops and mentorship, working with partners to support and develop festivals and cultural heritage tourism experiences that benefit both visitors and communities. Our partnership is focused on strengthening rural economies through bolstering quality tourism experiences. The two-year project began in July 2023.

UPLIFT supports tourism through community-driven efforts in rural North Carolina. This team works regionally—across county borders—to support local tourism leaders and practitioners in realizing their vision for tourism in their community. Their work supports natural, recreational, cultural, agricultural, culinary, built, and additional areas of tourism.

The organization has six foundational, acronymic building blocks that guide its strategy development for supporting a region:

Understand tourism knowledge and context
Plan to know what a community wants to achieve with tourism and how to get there
Link and build local networks, tourism experiences, and their local stories
Innovate and enhance the tourism experiences offered
Finance through connecting with and accessing resources
Tell the story of the region to attract visitors

An arched, concrete bridge over a river, under a pink sunset.

Workshops

Groups of people sit at tables in conversation in a room with exposed brick and air ducts.

Creating Engaging Festivals

The first series of workshops, Creating Engaging Festivals, took place in August 2023, led by Center director of special projects Halle Butvin and senior curator Diana Baird N’Diaye. With 145 local festival organizers in North Carolina in attendance, they discussed the Smithsonian Folklife Festival’s models of participatory research and presentation, highlighting the importance of community engagement. Participants received a digital toolkit with templates, examples, and other resources for festival design and management.

Groups of people sit at tables during a presentation by one woman.

Conceptualizing & Enhancing Your Tourism Experience

In January 2024, we invited artists, artisans, musicians, dancers, cooks, farmers, nature enthusiasts, history buffs, storytellers and other creatives to take part in a workshop, Conceptualizing & Enhancing Your Tourism Experience. Participants learned the basics of sharing their cultural practice and earning extra money by offering engaging, paid tourism experiences. Throughout the one-day workshop, participants filled out concept worksheets, completing each section through hands-on activities and discussion and leaving with a roadmap to launch a tourism experience to visitors.

Webinars

In addition to in-person workshops, the Center produced virtual Q&As to dive deeper into the content and bring in other staff from the Smithsonian and beyond.