Clare is co-founder of Tayside’s newest cultural destination, the Cateran Ecomuseum. This new ‘museum without walls’ – all its sites are outside – is set in the beautiful and dramatic landscapes of Eastern Perthshire & Western Angus and was launched in 2019. Designed to reveal the hidden heritage of this little known part of Scotland by the community who live there it tells the story of its people, places and landscapes across 6,000 years of human history and 400 million years of geological history.
Clare and her colleagues are developing plans for the Ecomuseum to prototype a Regenerative Tourism/Circular Economy approach to Tourism Destination Management, the aim being to create a replicable model for other tourism destinations. “Regenerative Tourism and Circular Economy practises offer a pathway to the radical change we need in how the Tourism Industry operates” says Clare. “Regenerative Tourism is all about ‘leaving things better’. Sustainable Tourism, the current mainstream concept, tends to focus on reducing the negative impacts of tourism. Regenerative Tourism and Circular Economy practices on the other hand aim to replenish and restore what we have lost by helping to build communities that thrive, while allowing the planet to thrive too. “