You may have seen a bright little logo floating around at some of the Town's Cool Little Events this past year.

Cool Little Towns is a tourism initiative partnered with Travel Alberta, focusing on the areas south of Calgary and the unique cultural and scenic differences you can find down South.

Alexandra Ross, a lead with Cool Little Towns, says that they include eight communities in the Foothills area.

"Cool Little Towns is the region south of Calgary and it covers Nanton, High River, MD of Foothills, Okotoks, Black Diamond, Turner Valley, Longview and Bragg Creek."

The aim of Cool Little Towns is to bring more tourism and traffic to the communities south of Calgary.

You can find themed self guided driving tours, blogger campaigns, coverage from community events, and even foodies can find something that wets their appetite on the Cool Little Towns website.

Ross says they've been working hard to build their brand over the last few years, now they are seeing success.

"We had a presentation tonight to celebrate our accomplishments." Ross says "For the past three years we've worked hard to put down the foundation for the Cool Little Towns Initiative. Finally in 2017 we can reap the success and also promote Cool Little Towns!"

"It helps to have a boost from the government as well" as Calgary-Hawkwood MLA Michael Connolly says, the government intends to keep boosting the cultural and tourism sector of smaller communities.

"Tourism is one of the largest industries in Alberta and one the fastest growing industries in the province." Connolly adds "When everything was going down from whether it was the down-turn in oil or anything else, tourism was always the one program that was growing because of our lower dollar."

The Provincial Government and Tourism Alberta have given grants to Cool Little Towns as they see more tourism and traffic to local businesses also boosts smaller communities economically.

If you haven't looked at your town through a tourist's eyes you can head to the Cool Little Towns website or Facebook pages, and see all of 'cool little things' going on in our communities.

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