Journal of Rural Studies 97 (2023) 105–114 Available online 13 December 2022 0743-0167/© 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Neo-endogenous revitalisation: Enhancing community resilience through art tourism and rural entrepreneurship Meng Qu a, * , Simona Zollet b a Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Hiroshima University, Japan b Department of Academia-Government-Industry Collaboration, Hiroshima University, Japan A R T I C L E INFO Keywords: Socially engaged art Neo-endogenous development Micro-entrepreneurship Creative rural revitalisation Community resilience Peripheral islands ABSTRACT The decline and socio-economic stagnation of rural communities is a growing concern across the world. To promote community resilience, art- and creativity-based strategies are emerging as important means for rural revitalisation. This study adopts a neo-endogenous perspective to examine how socially engaged art can represent an effective tool for revitalising communities and strengthening their resilience. We examine the case of Japan’s Setouchi Triennale, an international art festival which aims at revitalising twelve small islands by promoting socially engaged art and festival tourism. This mixed methods research focuses on the three islands characterised by the best revitalisation outcomes. The tourism opportunities and increased place recognition resulting from the exogenous art festival initiative triggered endogenous community responses in terms of increased entrepreneurship and social innovation, facilitating the emergence of neo-endogenous revitalisation processes. At the same time, different islands are characterized by different response mechanisms, which depend on the initial resources and features of each island. Exogenous, endogenous, and neo-endogenous elements are therefore all necessary to increase rural resilience. Successful neo-endogenous revitalisation through socially engaged art, however, requires long-term co-creation between exogenous art development and endogenous community activities. 1. Introduction Rural communities adapt to risks and disruptions in ways that strive to maintain the stability of their social system and reduce loss (Li, 2022). Rural resilience encompasses the capacity for resistance, adaptation, and transformation, which can be boosted via the strengthening of social capital, particularly through bottom-up initiatives (Li, 2022; Li et al., 2016). This research explores how peripheral communities, in the face of ongoing crisis and the risk of disappearing, can seize external op- portunities to strengthen their capacity for resilience (Naldi et al., 2015). In particular, the paper focuses on adaptation and community level change under the infuence of big-scale exogenous art tourism devel- opment, and connects rural resilience with the concept of ‘neo-- endogenous revitalisation’, an expansion of the pre-existing concept of ‘neo-endogenous development’ (Ray, 2001). The concept of neo-endogenous development – arising from the combined action of exogenous and endogenous actors and processes – is well-established in Global North literature, especially in Europe (Bos- worth et al., 2016; Bosworth and Atterton, 2012; Georgios et al., 2021). Although previous research has discussed rural revitalisation and neo-endogenous development in relation to the culture and creative industries (Kneafsey et al., 2001; Ray, 2006; Roberts and Townsend, 2016; Vasstrøm and Normann, 2019), works specifcally focusing on rural art festivals and tourism remain scarce, with exceptions such as Mahon and Hyyryl¨ ainen (2019). This study applies the concept of neo-endogenous revitalisation to art festivals in rural Japan. Japan has so far has remained peripheral to the neo-endogenous development debate, despite being one of the Global North countries most affected by rural decline processes, and showing many similarities with other geographic contexts, including Europe, in relation to rural issues (Dilley et al., 2022; Manzenreiter et al., 2020). The Japanese government has approached rural revital- isation from different perspectives, including, in recent years, through the promotion of art-based projects that combine site-specifc art with social engagement. The most prominent and successful cases, the Setouchi Triennale and Echigo-Tsumari art festivals, have acted as trailblazers to cement the ‘revitalisation oriented’ image of rural art festivals (Klien, 2010; Qu and Funck, 2021; Tagore-Erwin, 2018; Tu, * Corresponding author. E-mail address: kinghoodqu@gmail.com (M. Qu). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Rural Studies journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jrurstud https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2022.11.016 Received 30 March 2022; Received in revised form 14 November 2022; Accepted 30 November 2022