by Dr. Nicole L. Vaugeois, Vancouver Island
University
I am one of a number of BC Regional Innovation Chairs located in several non-metropolitan BC communities. George Penfold, a regular contributor to
the CITinfoResource, is a RIC at Selkirk College in Castlegar [see his current article in this issue, on rural development]. Dr. John Church is the RIC in Catttle Industry Sustainability at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops [profiled in May 2009 at CITinfoResource]. The mandate of the BCRIC is to support rural communities that are diversifying their economic base. Amenity-bas
ed industries like tourism are a significant focus, and the RICs initiative emphasizes sharing innovation, ideas, and insight amongst BC communities, academic communities, and amongst the RICs themselves.
My focus at Vancouver Island Unversity is on sustainable tourism development for rural areas, something I've been working on for some time before being appointed to the RIC position. With a range of communities across BC, I've participated on projects that are successfully building capacity for tourism planning decisions. Many of these projects draw on the expertise of a network of academic, government, and non-government (NGO) partners. For example, since 2006 a multi-partner collaborative project has brought faculty and students out into rural regions of the province to engage in research projects and to share knowledge in presentations and workshops. It's called the Tourism Research Innovation Project, or TRIP, and you can find it online at www.trip-project.ca. TRIP has become self-sustaining and will continue enabling communities to tap into a variety of resources. The products from the project are intended to be free of cost and easy to access. All TRIP how-to manuals, innovation snapshots, videos, reports, and presentations are available for download from the website.
Linking Post-secondary Resources and Rural Opportunities
In my experience, the most valued resource that programs like RIC and TRIP can offer rural communities is the time and energy provided by University students. Through my work I've been able to act as a “knowledge broker,” connecting communities that have jobs to be done with faculty and students who have the necessary skills and interest. The list of jobs is varied and includes running focus groups, doing signage audits, conducting inventories, to name a few.
Our teams have been able to mobilize relatively quickly to respond to and collaborate with community partners to conduct a number of “participatory rural appraisals” to meet their information needs. For example, teams have worked in MacKenzie, Wells/Barkerville, Likely, and Gold River to provide on the ground assistance with information gathering. The success of this model is showing up in requests for similar collaborations from other communities. Given the demand, I am looking forward to finding more ways to bring teams into the field to engage in this type of activity.
Another example of successful extension activity relates to community signage, often cited as one of the biggest planning issues for tourism development in rural BC. The problem is one of enabling area visitors to navigate a rural region and discover and enjoy the "assets" of the area. Our team has developed a “how-to manual” on community signage that gives community decision-makers critical information on how to assess and improve signage. We've also provided teams of students to do “signage audits” for communities and businesses. This is a win-win situation: students love to do real-life projects that have real-world benefit to communities; and communities get important tourism planning work done that might helps them build their capacities.
Fostering Innovation in Sustainable Tourism
In the spring of 2009, I worked with colleagues from Thompson Rivers University, College of the Rockies, and University of Northern BC on a project called Fostering Innovation in Sustainable Tourism, or FIST. Our purpose was to identify examples of BC communities and tourism-related businesses that were leading the way in sustainability. Once located and interviewed, we developed a variety of tools to share these innovations. We developed a video, a manual of “Made in BC” innovators, and wrote a research report that outlines overall adoption of "sustainable" behaviours by rural operators. Many of the operators profiled have demonstrated valuable and successful ideas related to land use planning. By gathering these stories and creating means for sharing innovation, we are giving operators in other communities the opportunity to move more quickly to sustainable practices.
Based on my experience of working with rural communities, there is no shortage of ideas or desire by community leaders and business owners to develop 'sustainable' practices. Academic institutions can play a valuable role in supporting rural areas in economic transition – if they can find ways to get out into communities, form and maintain relationships, and provide timely resources such as research or students to help them make their decisions. It's exciting to see what our program in Tourism and Sustainable Rural Development at Vancouver Island University has accomplished in a short period of time. With Regional Innovation Chairs established in a number of non-metropolitan BC communities I'm optimistic that rural communities now have an established research and development tool to support their work in tourism innovation.
Current projects
I am currently developing a workplan to guide the VIU RIC research agenda for the next couple of years. It's important to me that it is responsive to the needs of the rural communities we work with, and I encourage groups and individuals to contact me. For our work to be of benefit, we need to hear about community needs, and to explore opportunities for synergy on existing projects.
In the meantime, I'm looking forward to BC’s first Rural Tourism Conference being organized in the North Shuswap region http://redtree.tru.ca/Conferences/index.htm from April 6-8th. Many of the lessons learned by those working in rural tourism throughout BC will be shared there. Our goal is to develop networks and to continue sharing lessons learned in the future. I encourage all readers of the CITinfoResource, and all CIT project partners to she would like to attend.
For more information about what I doing as the RIC at VIU, please visit my website at http://web.viu.ca/vaugeois. I also keeps a blog on sustainable rural tourism at: http://ruraltourismdevelopment.blogspot.com/
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