Counter-Tourism: A Pocketbook: 50 Odd Things to Do in a Heritage Site
Author(s): Crab Man
The subtitle - 50 Odd Things to do in a Heritage Site (and other places) - says it all. This is a book to take with you next time you visit a historic or heritage site. Its 50 'tactics' are designed to transform the way you look at these places and to get you thinking about the way the industry packages 'heritage'. It's also an interesting and provocative present for parents, grandparents and anyone else who becomes a tourist from time to time. Although you're encouraged to try them anywhere, many of the tactics work best in a castle, stately home or similar 'attraction'. Among the ideas, you'll find 'Photograph all the stains' and 'Visit heritage sites as if you were a member of a bomb disposal team' - some come with more elaborate instructions but others are as simple as that. The 'tactics' are interspersed with thoughts and commentaries that appear on blue plaques. These soon reveal that the Pocketbook is just the tip of the iceberg. There's a whole radical philosophy underpinning Crab Man's approach to heritage, which has its own 'proper' book (Counter-Tourism: The Handbook). Counter-Tourism is definitely not about 'sneering at tourism'.
While the Pocketbook does collect some of the best 'Heritij' cliches and nonsense (including "Explore England's England" and the fabulous "Hop on one leg in beautiful surroundings"), we're encouraged to "Embrace the cock-ups and the accidental poetry - they may tell us much more - than yet another information board or guide in a three-cornered hat".
Product Information
Crab Man (Phil Smith) has several backgrounds. One, large and wide, is in performance and music theatre [he has written more than 100 plays for companies including St Petersburg State Comedy Theatre, Opera North and Perpetual Motion, and he is dramaturg with TNT (Munich)]. From site-specific performances in South Devon beach huts, lidos, tea shops and other unconventional settings, to mis-guides in National Trust properties, to counter-tours and drifts in city streets, Crab Man has long practised what he preaches in these two books on Counter-Tourism. He is a visiting lecturer at the University of Exeter and the University of Plymouth. He is being paid to do interesting things for the Culture Olympiad. With Signpost (Simon Persighetti) he is co-author of 'A Sardine Street Box of Tricks' - a handbook for anyone who wants to make their own 'mis-guided' tour or walk, which is also being used regularly by university drama departments . Singlehanded, he walked and wrote 'Mythogeography: A Guide to Walking Sideways', a book you can buy here and an entire socio-cultural bath you can immerse yourself in here. He is one of four core member of a group of artist-researchers called Wrights and Sites, who have generated a range of mis-guides, performances, possible cities and forests and other wonders.
General Fields
- :
- : Triarchy Press
- : Triarchy Press
- : 0.094
- : 27 July 2012
- : 140mm X 116mm X 7mm
- : United Kingdom
- : books
Special Fields
- : Crab Man
- : Paperback
- : 338.4791
- : 88
- : 102 illustrations
