Virtual seminar on practitioner aspects of biocultural heritage in wellbeing tourism
Wellbeing tourism and biocultural heritage took the virtual stage once again for the 3rd in the series of the Advanced Understanding of Wellbeing Seminars. On June 9th a new seminar was presented with the support of EUniWell. This goal of this seminar was to provide insights on wellbeing and tourism perspectives. The seminar was held online and was hosted by the Birmingham Business School at the University of Birmingham.
The first presentation that took the centre stage was ‘Being Enterprising in Beautiful Landscapes’. It was presented by Professor Rosalind Jones from Liverpool John Moores University (United Kingdom). The purpose of the study presented is to create better landscapes and to support the UK population health and wellbeing putting special emphasis into the development of small businesses in areas of outstanding natural beauty.
The research design focused on Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONBs) and aims at understanding deeply participants from the chosen areas through interviews and providing insights in terms of the resilience capacity of the business owners, particularly after the scourge of the Covid 19 pandemic.
A key point of interest for the presentation also was the BCHT (Biocultural Heritage Tourism) and how the project provides a new viewpoint in terms of influencing change in the communities. Particularly it was deemed relevant some dimensions such as making the protection of the environment deeply rooted into the culture of the small business owners in the AONBs.
The research’s implications are that AONB and their national association are a major driver to influence change at grass roots and policy level, engaging communities, businesses and partners. Also, one of the main topics brought to the attention of the attendants was that rural farming businesses are of real concern due to the current situation (carbon emissions and Brexit) and they are critical for rural infrastructure overall.
The second presentation of the day was conducted by Dr Ian Merrell (Newcastle University/University of Exeter) and Sarah Jordan (North Devon UNESCO Biosphere Reserve) where they shared the process of implementing BCHT in North Devon. Various kinds of interventions and mechanisms were used to engage with different stakeholders in the area to obtain insights from the various actors involved in the development of the biosphere reserve which is a slightly different classification of protected landscapes than the AONB that were previously explained in the other session.
One of the key elements of the project was the involvement of many political organisations as well as the university and it involved working with the partners, these being the biosphere reserves, as well as local businesses. As well as explaining how the project went about implementing the project, Ian and Sarah’s presentation shared some of the immersive experiences launched in partnership with local businesses.
Text by Javier Contreras Escobedo, student of the Birmingham Business School
