Dancing Resilience: Towards sustainable tourism in rural fragile communities of Ghana

Abstract

Tourism, as a multi-purpose driver for community development in the sector of socio-cultural and economic sustenance is yielding wide interest globally. This is relative to how resources are utilized, managed and promoted through heritage interpretation. In this paper, heritage interpretation refers to the full range of activities deduced from collective knowledge systems intended to increase public awareness and enhance understanding of tourism landscape (International Council on Monuments and Sites [ICOMOS] Charter 2008). The relevance of heritage interpretation can offer meaningful tourism experience, reduce the increasing global stress and the vicissitudes of tourism complexities and as well stimulate innovation. All these are viable when opportunities, through continued negotiations of diverse models including “socio-ecological resilience” are tested; because they intersect between ecological sensitive, socially accepted and economically feasible and rewarding locations (McCool 2013, Butler 2013, Buckley 2013, Weaver 2015 and Wheeler, 2013) by compressing the spatial scale to a local case study whilst expanding the temporal scale.

It is against this backdrop that this paper further seeks to discuss and explore the inherent opportunities in the Tallensi dance tradition, to show how it contributes to the understanding sustainable interpretation through intangible cultural activities.