Research is a creative activity that can be carried out at different stages of the research process (Kara, 2015). Both creativity and research are concerned with seeking solutions to problems to render a subject in a distinctive way, so it can be applied in communities (Ahmed, 2009). Theories of creativity, specifically about the investigation of why some people are more creative than others, have focused on a variety of aspects (Rhodes, 1961). The factors which dominate creative tourism literature identify the person as vital but are not focusing on this element. Hence, this thesis will focus on studying the people portrayed in CREATOUR documentary, to outline a creative person's ability, personality characteristics, as well as of process learning on an individual and on a societal level (Carter, 2004; Makel and Plucker, 2008, Runco, 2004; Swann, 2006; Batey, 2012; Walsh, Anders and Hancock, 2013). These will provide further insight about creative people, while also showing different cognitive approaches that try to describe thought mechanisms and techniques for creative thinking (Sternberg, 2009).

CREATOUR research-and-application project (Duxbury, Richards, 2019) - "Development of Creative Tourism Destinations in Small Cities and Rural Areas" (creatour.pt) contributed to the development of the creative tourism body of knowledge in Portugal, by studying and gathering a multitude of definitions of creative tourism and the people interested in taking part in it. This team of researchers have been struggling in finding answers regarding the definition of creative tourism and finding out who is the consumer of creative tourism in Portugal. Hence, this thesis proposes a new research methodology, which uses a theoretical framework based on creativity, structuring the different stages of this research process based on it. The use of an arts-based research methodology (ABR) as a paradigm, emphasizes CREATOUR documentary and qualitative data (semi-structured interview and open-ended questionnaire) as a particular stream of interest for creative tourism research. The analysis-discussion section also uses ABR in the format of screenwriting analysis - a series of videocasts on YouTube about Creative Tourism, to demonstrate how the use of creative methods could work both as an input and output to a more democratized and collaborative knowledge production about creative tourism and tourists.


Keywords: Creativity, creative tourism, creative people, creative research methodology, arts-based research.