Cultural Tourism Planning ·
“The Wheel of Seasons” in the Cairngorms National Park

Role
Service Designer · Design Researcher · Visual Communication Designer · Graphic Designer · Web Designer

Keywords
Service Design · Research through Design · Bioregional Citizenship · Ethnographic Fieldwork · Asset Mapping · Place Identity · Participatory Design Research

Location
Glasgow&Highland Scotland, 2023

Overview
The Wheel of Seasons was developed in partnership with the Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEAll) Scotland as a design-led exploration of bioregional citizenship within Cairngorms National Park, the UK's largest national park. Rather than approaching the park through tourism or destination branding, the project investigated how design could strengthen relationships between people, ecology and local culture within a bioregional context. Grounded in the principles of the Wellbeing Economy, the project explored how ecological systems, cultural heritage and community life could become interconnected resources for cultivating regional identity, participation and long-term wellbeing.

Development
The project combined desk research, contextual inquiry, ethnographic fieldwork, and participatory design research to explore how local communities experience and relate to the Cairngorms. Through conversations and collaborative knowledge-building with residents, writers, photographers, local guides, and community organisations, we found that people's attachment to the region was shaped less by individual attractions than by seasonal rhythms, everyday cultural practices, and their lived relationships with the landscape. These insights reframed seasonality not merely as an environmental cycle, but as a cultural structure through which people experience, understand, and inhabit place.

Building on these findings, I contributed to translating the research into a place-based service strategy centred on four seasonal celebrations. Rather than creating a new visitor experience, the proposal positioned seasonal change as an organising framework for connecting ecological knowledge, local traditions, and community participation, demonstrating how service design can strengthen place identity while supporting long-term community wellbeing.

This project is concerned with the blurred and unrecognizable external image of Cairngorms National Park. By uncovering the culture and spirit contained in the different seasons of the cairngorms, we will create four-season celebrations unique to
the Cairngorms, so as to redefine the brand identity and create economy while attracting tourists to experience the charming
natural landscape of Cairngorms.