The creative tourist and the creating artist: the base for rural development.

Abstract This brief essay explores how arts-based creative tourism contributes to positive attitudes towards rural and natural areas, both by participating creative tourists and artists as well as by the local community. It shows the necessity of a sense of place, an awareness, a consciousness of the valorization of art as a creative force to break the negative downward spiral of negligence, outmigration, isolation, and dependency of small rural communities in rural and natural areas.