Rural Community Gateway

...All I really wanted was a fridge magnet and possibly some postcards. Had I been staying for a while, I would also have been interested in some nice, but reasonably priced, local foods and crafts. My feeling is that most visitors will just want the standard low-cost items but those who have a specific link to the country (i.e family, ancestry etc) or are keen on collectibles might be prepared to pay more for their gift shop purchases.

26-May-2008 @ 14:53PM

Norette Ferns

I was really interested to hear about the Dumfries and Galloway Spring Fling. They have a great website: http://www.artandcraftsouthwestscotland.com/springfling/index.asp

Hopefully, we will be able to follow this up and do an article about the Spring Fling. If anyone was at this year's event, which is still running today (26th May 2008) let us know what you thought.

Unfortunately most of the tourist guides send them to areas where the tat is in abundance. We run a small family Inn and try to offer good Scottish food cooked on the premises as it is ordered. Most of the bigger outlets , who are usually packed cannot do this and so the tourist ends up with a bad food experience of Scotland.
We try and point our visitors away from the usual haunts to allow them to see a truer picture of our beautiful country, we hope that this will send them to more natural places and authentic food, drink and craftwork

There is both a serious problem and an opportunity here. Most of the souvenir/gift outlets sell cheap imports - often Celtic themed. A prime example lies in the products on offer in the ubiquitous "woolen mills" eg Inverary where nothing was made in Scotland let alone Argyll. I recall pointing out to one purveyor of "Highland Crafts" in Oban that he hadn't bothered to remove the made in China labels but had covered them with a made in Scotland sticker. His response was that the made in Scotland sticker was indeed made in Scotland.

We have an abundance of good quality makers and artists but their high quality products tend to be relatively expensive for the down market tourists. Also our markets, particulalrly in rural areas are too small to make craft outlets viable. There are ways round this but the need coordination and a bit of pump priming from the public agencies. The Spring Fling event in Dumfries and Galloway is a first rate example of the way we could use our artisanal businesses as an integral part of the tourism oroduct and attract new visitors with a propensity to spend. Very few regions, however, have arts and crafts development units and support programmes to enable this type of initiative. There answer is therefore complex. Firstly we need dedicated craft development initiatives on the D&G model, some form of accreditation of quality (in Spring Fling this is done by peer group evaluation rather than bureaucratic systems) and coherent brand marketing. The D&G model shows that the potential can be realised with minimal public funding but does need a coherent arganised approach from both the trade and the public agencies working in concert. In most areas of rural Scotland - Argyll being a prime example of ingrained institutional incompetence - this will be a long wait. One way of getting the ball rolling, which has worked in some areas is to organise local business to business events (B2B in the jargon) between tourism and artc/craft businesses. Otherwise, in short term profitability terms, I fear the answer is to sell the crap at a good mark-up and try not to look too ashamed.