Vanessa Santos

Hi there!
My name is Vanessa and I'm a visual artist that turned into researcher within the cultural and creative industries.
My doctoral research lies primarily on culture, creativity and tourism, focusing on the role of the arts at the service of sustainable tourism development and community resilience, seeking to harness creative tourism for social justice and equitable futures. Creative tourism activities include traditional arts and crafts, animal husbandry, folk music and
others, as well as contemporary activities that compose the cultural and creative industries (CCI),
such as performing and visual arts, handicrafts and jewellery, cinema, music, architecture, design,
fashion and media, that have in common the use of creativity, cultural knowledge and
intellectual property as resources, that are concentrated in the same geographical space, and
because of that have social and cultural significance.
Adding to this, I've worked more than a decade in the artistic areas of ecological design, theatre, music, event, and festival production and management of cultural and creative industries (CCI).
My main hobbies are arts and crafts (making jewelry and eco-design pieces - fashion and interior design), I am a DJ of world music, and I love to move my body with African dances.