Artistic Cartographies and Place-based Service Design for Making Places

This chapter investigates placemaking through performance, the idea of placemaking, and performing both in a natural environment and through embodied experience in Finnish Lapland. It discusses place-based arts and service design that have adopted a deep consideration for ‘place ethic’, which demands consideration and respect for any place that reaches further than merely drawing aesthetic inspiration derived from what is known as the ‘tourist gaze’. The chapter asks whether artistic cartographies, such as in modern cartography – that is, the studying of new materialities and ways to present oneself – can consider the cultural value of a place, acknowledging that it is deeply rooted in cultural or natural meanings and traditions that are often rendered invisible or silent. Furthermore, it determines whether arts- and service design-based placemaking can be utilised to present a critical view on traditional placemaking approaches that seem to employ locals and address their stories and ways of being, but which still acknowledge colonial conceptualisations of the ‘site’. This chapter studies if arts- and service design-based placemaking enhances the connection with people and non-humans in community-based tourism.