In northern Michigan, a cultural tourism partnership between the Michigan Humanities Council (MHC) and the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs (MCACA) provides interpretive services for visitors to the region's state parks, national forests and national parks during the height of the summer season. Working primarily with local, state and federal recreation area managers, as well as small rural museums and community centers in northern Lower Michigan and the Upper Peninsula, Michigan's Great Outdoors Culture Tour supports touring artists, who entertain their audiences with the adventures of mariners, voyageurs and fur traders who traveled the Great Lakes, and the lives and customs of settlers, legendary miners and lumberjacks, and Native American people in Michigan's northwoods.

Each presenter/group travels for one week, presenting three-to-five evening programs at different and dispersed venues, primarily remote locations where evening activities draw several hundred campers, travelers and local residents. The tour sponsors, MHC and MCACA, share a variety of partnership resources, including an Arts and Humanities Touring Program Directory, which lists live music, dance, storytelling, historical interpretation and visual arts programs. The directory forms the artistic core of the culture tour and is supplemented by other interpretive specialists from the region with programs appropriate for outdoor venues and specific locales and subjects. A full-time culture tour coordinator at the humanities council handles all the scheduling and administrative activities, including the promotional brochures, regional media contacts and host-and-presenter coordination. A tour schedule is distributed by the state's visitors centers and convention and visitors bureaus, and it is posted on the state tourism agency's and sponsors' Web sites.

Michigan's Great Outdoors Culture Tour serves about 1,000 people a week for six weeks between early July and mid-August. Requests for additional programs from both host agencies and the public have increased significantly in the tour's first two years. In 2000, the schedule will expand from 84 to 94 programs and the number of cultural presenters has grown from 18 to 20. For the first time, hosts will include all four national parks in Michigan, all four national forests and 19 Michigan state parks. For more information contact the humanities council.