Creative folk art and cultural tourism in the city of Loulé (Algarve/Portugal)

Abstract This work approaches the creative folk art as a complementary offering to the product “cultural tourism” in urban space, an experience that has the unraveling of reflections and interpretations about the strategic innovation of craft products in the city of Loulé, in Algarve region, in Portugal, as an interpretive key. By this assumption, we are not interested in a description of artisans and crafts, but in the discussion about the relationship between folk art and creativity, an integrated approach in the trends of cultural tourism. In this context, the article offers the example of Ancestral Techniques and Current Solutions (ATCS) project. Thus, we consider the subjectivity of interviews and fieldwork as a method, and, through those ones, we observed everyday situations, spaces and places of artisans with their creative folk art. Therefore, the text brings arguments and analysis about tourism in the cultural and creative contexts and in the experience of valorization of folk art in Loulé.