Cultural and Creative Work in Rural and Remote Areas: An Emerging International Conversation

This article was originally published in the International Journal of Cultural Policy in December 2020. https://doi.org/10.1080/10286632.2020.1837788An earlier version of this article was a keynote presentation at the Nordic Conference on Cultural Policy Research, held at Bifröst University, Iceland, in 2019.This article reports on the themes and trajectories of a multidisciplinary and international literature. It reveals how cultural and creative work in rural and remote areas has largely been examined and articulated through three storylines: (1) cultural vitality, that is, culture as a resource for community development; (2) the ‘rural creative class’, recently linked to rural innovation; and (3) rural creative economies and creative entrepreneurship in rural and remote areas. Over the past decade, these strands of discourse have become more intertwined in policy and planning documents, suggesting an opportunity for converging these discussions into a more comprehensive approach to fostering cultural and creative work in rural and remote areas. However, cultural policy directed to rural areas remains underdeveloped compared to its urban counterpart