Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Rural Studies journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jrurstud Theatre and sustainable territorial communities: A case study in Northern Portugal Augusto Santos Silva a , Helena Santos a,* , Joana Ramalho b , Ricardo Moreira c a Faculty of Economics, University of Porto: Faculdade de Economia da Universidade do Porto, R. Roberto Frias, 4200-464 Porto, Portugal b European University, Portugal: Quinta do Bom Nome, Estrada da Correia, 53, 1500-210 Lisboa, Portugal c Independent Cultural Consultant, Portugal ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Arts in rural territories Sustainable development Theatre Local cultural policies Portugal ABSTRACT To consider culture as the fourth pillar of sustainability implies new intellectual and political debate at both the theoretical and the empirical level, revisiting knowledge already established within economics and the sociology of development on the centrality of culture as a framework, a resource and a strategy for local and community development. When considered in the context of rural sustainability, rural territories pose specific problems. On the one hand, demographic and socioeconomic imbalances represent hard restrictions on the ways that resources and agents can be mobilized as part of development processes. On the other hand, the richness of material and non-material heritage, the vividness of oral traditions, a strong sense of community and cultural identity, are important local assets that can be transformed into effective instruments for development via appropriate po- licies and programs. This paper discusses the challenges and opportunities for applying culture as an instrument of rural sus- tainability by exploring the specific case study example of a long-term artistic and cultural intervention project in Northern Portugal. The project involves a professional theatre troupe delivering performance-based, creative and educational activities within a number of rural communities. The project is itself a partnership between a group of professional artists and five municipalities in Northern Portugal; its aim is to use the rich non-material local heritage as a basis for collective involvement in a sustainable culture-driven development strategy. The paper traces the evolution of the project over a 10 year period since its inception in 2004 and reveals empirically the ways in which it has impacted upon local development, highlighting the potential of culture as an instrument in rural sustainability. 1. Introduction: the issue of culture and development In their recent text on cultural policies, Bell and Oakley (2015) distinguish three main scales at which such policies are currently put into practice: urban, national and international. They point in parti- cular to the key role of urban spaces as centres for political innovation in this regard, along with a growing appreciation of the role of geo- graphy and territory in the successful design and implementation of cultural policies. Their research serves to draw attention to the need for similar inquiry into the significance of cultural policy and intervention at the scale of the rural region, for example, by placing a stronger focus on the potential of cultural resources to leverage positive development outcomes, and on ways of connecting them to regionally and locally based community and social development strategies. From quite diverse experiences and disciplinary perspectives, this rural regional focus is becoming more visible, although still lacking wider recognition, systematisation and operationalisation. Exceptions include the work by Azzopardi (2012) and Ledwith (2012), both ar- guing for a contextualised community engaged research agenda for culture in development, along with the recent review by MacDowall et al. (2015), who also argue for the embedding of cultural policy in rural specific contexts (see also Duxbury and Campbell, 2009; Bell and Jayne, 2010; Cruickshank, 2016). There remains, however, a tendency to overemphasize the connection between culture and economy in de- velopment discourses, reducing the cultural economy to a creative and urban industries focus. This problematic tendency ignores the global nature of development and also presents a rather unilateral perspective on economic dimensions of culture (see, e.g., Greffe, 1986; Dessein et al., 2015; De Beukelaer and Freitas, 2015). This unilateral perspec- tive and limited appreciation of the complexity of culture are especially https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2018.04.004 Received 9 March 2016; Received in revised form 4 April 2018; Accepted 4 April 2018 * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: asilva@fep.up.pt (A. Santos Silva), hsantos@fep.up.pt (H. Santos), julouramalho@gmail.com (J. Ramalho), moreira.rr@gmail.com (R. Moreira). URLS: http://www.fep.up.pt (A. Santos Silva), http://www.fep.up.pt (H. Santos), https://www.europeia.pt (J. Ramalho). Journal of Rural Studies xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx 0743-0167/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Please cite this article as: Santos Silva, A., Journal of Rural Studies (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2018.04.004