Since my first article January 2014, the French elections have taken place, the French government has been reshuffled, tourism’s spring season has begun in both cities.
Other more serious issues have arisen in Eastern Europe, which have made sensationalist quarrels over tourism seem a little lacking in European spirit, perhaps.
However, the open
discussion generated by a comparison of the two strategies is deserving of further
exploration, not so much with regard to the visitors, more into the way residents,
the most involved, are creating new approaches which prevent tourists from
remaining mere statistics or abstractions categorised by average daily spending.
Everybody
on the outskirts?
Beyond all the gesticulating and the
jostling, there exists in both towns a reality which I have had to face both on
a personal and a familial level: the impossibility for the majority of
residents of these gigantic cities to live in the centre, as they cannot afford
to buy or rent space there. In this regard, neither capital has anything to
envy.
As a result, a large portion of the
population lives not just physically but intellectually, culturally and
historically on the periphery, unable to appreciate personally the past which
produced these cities’ heritage, nor can they truly appreciate the heritage of
the towns, even the villages, in which they live, whose ancient cores have been
buried under recent, standardising constructions.
And yet, these satellites of life and
production enjoyed a functional relationship with the centre, often
specialising as suppliers of fruit or vegetables, small crafts or industrial
products. Parisians came there to relax and walk around on a Sunday – depicted inImpressionist paintings – akin to today when those from the suburbs (banlieues) come to walk and perhaps
unwind in the city centre’s shopping areas on a Saturday. These people are demanding
in greater and greater number that the shopping continues on Sunday, which
Paris still cannot fully decide upon. London, on the other hand, understood
long ago the benefits to tourism and the economy of keeping the shopping going,
just like London’s museums understood the payoff of introducing free entry
almost completely across the board.
Alfred Sisley. Le Pont à Argenteuil
Memory Loss: Storytelling’s solutions
I am still convinced
that our first priority – which must involve residents as much as tourists – should
be managing to tell (or have told) the past, to systematically traces of
history, to decode the names of those who came before us, our link to the past,
to understand the role of immigrations both recent and earlier, rather than to
battle desperately for DIY shops to open on Sundays.
In short, I thought it essential to find a
common memory among all the scattered signals, as Jean-Christophe Bailly did in
his look at landscapes (Le dépaysement:Voyages en France).It is necessary if we are to move past simple tourism
profitability and work for all city users, the permanent as well as the
temporary.
Perhaps because I experienced Paris as a
commuter from the suburbs for thirty years, then as a resident and finally as a
visitor, I feel that the way forward is not to let the city become a museum,
but to make available all the best methods for conjuring up memories, be they
day-to-day and banal, exotic and symbolic, even created in dreams or pure
fantasy.
For me, this is the tourism of the future,
which no longer sets up barriers between the Chinese tour group, the well-off
Texan couple, the suburban pensioner, the restaurant owner from Vietnam or
Portugal, the local bar owner or the kid from the estates.
I still remember the American architect –
who, I have just read, passed away in 1999 – who bought a small house on
Folgate Street in London, which had belonged to a Huguenot family who brought
the traditions of the 17th century French silk weavers of Cevennes
with them to a house not far from that of Gilbert and George.
Who had expected to be talking about the
silk road on the streets of the City or in the area around the Barbican Centre
on… Silk Street… or in Spitalfields? This young man made a tour of his house to
tell by all means possible the life of this protestant family which only the
Great War could break apart. It is a sensitive approach to storytelling for
which he went as far as to have a roast dinner cooked so that the small group
of visitors might think that very scent of the lost family lingered on.
“The Jervis family are imaginary but attention to detail here is incredible, although do not be mistaken in thinking that historical accuracy was the driving force behind this project. Severs was not a historian and never wanted anyone to think of his home as a museum. It is his interpretation of 18th century domestic life and was put together on a very limited budget.” That was the early 1990s.
The approach was, I agree, rather elitist but it pointed
in a direction which is becoming much more fundamental movement than trend.
Invisible
Towns
Since the 1990s, numerous possibilities
have risen through virtual technology and mobile handsets, embedded stories -
sometimes audiobooks, sometimes downloaded movies - to help visitors delve into
the traces and tangible spaces of the past.
Reconstructed memory such as this can be
aided in particular by the cinema, as is seen in the walks through Paris
offered by Cinemacity (co-produced by Arte and Small Bang), the walks retracing
the steps of famous Parisians, or the sonic atmospheres created for the RadioGrenouille walks In Marseille.
Similarly, London has opened a visitor’s
website called London Incognito, some trips of which are also based on
behind-the-movie-scenes concepts. As such, less typically touristic areas of
the city are steadily getting involved.
Such websites can easily grow and evolve by
adapting to the latest movie releases. An example of this is the interactive
map created for the film Diplomatie,
which depicts Franco-German relations in Paris during the Second World War.
The thesis Margaut Abatecola presented to
IREST in July 2013 (Le développement des outils numériques et de
leurs effets sur le tourisme culturel francilien) provides contextual
analysis on digital tools in cultural tourism as well as analysis of the tools currently
in use in Ile-de-France. Although Paris and its museums may enjoy certain
privileges, the methodology Abatecola proposes can certainly serve as a guide
for explorations of other tourist regions.
Notable examples of these digital tools include
the game Enigmes à Versailles, the Monument Tracker Paris app (“the Heart of Paris, a flower of love so
beautiful, that we hold it in our hearts, that we love it all our life’ Charles
Trenet. Paris is known for its wonderful historic monuments and sites for you
to visit. Towers, cathedrals, palaces, arches, bridges and fountains: an
extraordinary collection of landmarks which take you back in time”) and more
generic apps like Mobily Trip and Cultureclic.
Sleepless night in Paris: Place de la République
What about the people?
While these mobile technologies and adventures on the web open the flood gates to multiple imaginations, as does the Carré d’Or app which shows us the culturalroutes of the Council of Europe that pass through Paris, their biggest fault is that they are sadly missing the physical presence of a guide or someone who truly loves their places, as well as the residents who actually hold the places’ many historical memories and stories. Voice and sound alone, however well recorded, are just never enough.
Carré d’Or: the Jesuit church of Saint Paul’s in Paris, connected to the Via Francigena
This is why I think that the experiment SparkLondon which has been running since 2007 is an extremely fascinating and, above all, inspiring example.
“Since 2007, Spark London has produced hundreds of
true storytelling shows in lots of different venues including the Canal Café
Theatre, Ritzy Picturehouse, Hackney Attic, the Blue Elephant Theatre, Soho
Square and Foyles. Outside London, there have been Sparks at Manchester Town
Hall, the Glenfiddich Distillery in Dufftown, and Riddle's Court for the
Edinburgh Festival.”
When we
begin to talk about ourselves, even if it sounds like a mundane little
anecdote, we begin a dialogue with the other, the momentary visitor, the
neighbour from afar.
Luckily,
Paris has avoided being outdone by joining up to the Greeters project which
began in the US and has spread to Florence, Barcelona, and London as Rent aLocal Friend.
“Paris kickstarted the concept in the (Ile-de-France) area in 2007 with the Parisien d’un
jour association. More recently,
Seine-Saint-Denis, Hauts-de-Seine and Seine-et-Marne have all developed the idea
through their tourist offices or with help from Parisien d’un jour. Some cities, such as Versailles and
Boulogne, have also forged similar partnerships with France Greeters.”
Conscious
of the need for originality, which has created spontaneous and
non-institutional forms of activity and new forms of voluntary involvement, the
city of Paris came up with a structured solution with a festival of sorts
entitled ‘Paris face cachée’, the
latest instalment of which took place in late January 2014.
“Over
72 hours, you will experience unique moments in unusual places. These are the
more than 100 original adventures made by Paris face cachée’s accomplices. Places,
structures, characters and enthusiasts that have invented, created and adapted
experiences for you to enjoy. New for 2014 are the Parenthèses Artistiques. We
have created for you musical, theatrical and cinematic encounters with intrepid
artists who have agreed to lend their unexpected places for a soirée. To enjoy
this original journey, you have to accept the rules: choose an experience,
without knowing who organised it; the meeting-point is a secret and will only
be revealed on your ticket after you have signed up!”
Paris face cachée: underground Paris
This
inventive operation is not so far removed from the initiative museomix, which consists of
creating communities of local interests in museum visits. “Museeomix works only
if a local community is enthusiastic and prepared to commit to the project. The
community takes shape through informal get-togethers which present Museomix and
involve representatives from various communities and sectors (design, hackerpaces, fablab, museogeeks,
education, etc.). It is not the museums which makes Museomix and opens its
doors to it, it is the community as a whole (of which the museum is but a part)
which organises and directs the local Museomix.”
Suburban Paris: a gentle revolution?
“They
did not go to the Eiffel Tower, or the île de la
Cité or the
Louvre. They took in the basilica in Saint-Denis, the tower of the Illustration
building in Bobigny, the Créteil skyline, Pouillon-city in Meudon-la-Forêt,
mont Valerien in Suresnes, the port of Genneviliers, île Saint-Denis…” This
is how Paul-Hervé Lavessière’s work La Révolution de Paris, published
last year by WildProject, is presented.
“In a
wide loop drawn out by the author, they connected Saint-Denis, Créteil and
Versailles through 37 communes and 4 départements (92, 93, 94,
78). They discovered the greater landscape of Paris: garden cities and
millstone grit houses, market squares and motorway junctions, massive housing
estates and schools of the Republic, leafy fallows and power lines, churches
and industrial zones, forts and mosques, gypsy caravans and freight train
marshalling yards, canals, rivers and streams…”
A revolution in the proper sense of the word? A change in attitudes towards tourists? A fruitful attempt to bring the suburbs out from their isolation from tourism? London too has been pioneering in offering tours of its peripheral areas, as well as its haunted houses, yet admittedly the two cities are not developed around the same urban model.
In
London we pass through concentric circles with sizeable green transitions,
whereas Paris only has its two Bois, Boulogne and Vincennes, to offer before we
head straight into a monstrous area in which human guides are needed to open
the doors of former farms and smaller workshops, and to look over the market
gardens and allotments.
Douce Banlieue offer nearly 150 of such walks, “with
an actor, for example, discovering the history of cinematography in the area,
with companions from the Ca se visite
association. Meeting people who live and work in these districts, with a
resident walking around the Saint-Denis International Market or in the company
of professional guides encountering hidden marvels such as the marriage hall in
Bobigny, the garden city of Stains, tours of Belleville…”
On 27 April 2014, there has been a walk with Douce Banlieue on the theme of the ‘Revolution of Paris’:
‘The route will be punctuated with unusual and
unexpected encounters and tours: music with the artists of the Gare au Théâtre
company, stories with Accueil Banlieues, urban transhumance with sheep from the
Clinamen association, the future eco-district of Ile-Saint-Denis with the
architects of Bellastock, fantastic garbage recyclers, a delve into 6b’s
factory of culture, a wander around the scaffolding of the Fabrique de la Ville
with Saint-Denis archaeologists, a walk through the former Carmel, now Saint-Denis
Art and History Museum, an encounter with Franciade craftsmen and the history
of the Basilica of the kings of France…”
Will
those detached from their city finally be able to reclaim their memory, their
intellectual and emotional property, of that which often forced them to reside
in the city?
Translation : Alistair Cowie
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