Tours' tours
Our 2-hours Tours' tours with our AFFE's association are unconventional city tours because these are free walks with locals for groups of up 40 persons. The routes aren't generally accessible to wheelchair users. The theme is unique for each tour: no standard no routine: either historic (general audiences) or on urban politics (students in some specializations as urban politics, sociocultural animations, cultural event planifications). For our Tours' tours, we've taken our inspiration from Greeter's tours. This idea for a walk - the greeting tours - came from Aline Brooks who was a New Yorker and who, 22 years ago in New York, wanted to break the image of her city by founding an association - The International Greeter Association - which could welcome visitors and show what New York really was, its uncrowded neighborhoods, its little secret corners, things like that. It's important to keep in mind that greeters walks are not professional guide tours.
Historic walks on Greco-Roman Antiquity (Louis Abronimo) and on Middle Ages (Namfone Marie Dutour):
After a few banalities about the city in general, we'll move on to life as we know it through writings, architecture and the latest researches in experimental archaeology. We're specialized in Middle Ages (Namfone Marie Dutour, hobbyst of Middle Ages), Greco-Roman Antiquity (Louis Abronimo, specialist on Greco-Roman litterature). One by one, we'll dismantle the false representations we have of this era through films, TV series and other media. At each stop along the way, a theme will be addressed:
-education;
-trade;
-food;
-leisures;
-farm;
-science knowledges;
-contemporary technologies;
-work world.
Our philosophy: history isn't only just about dates and wars as is often repeated in elementary school; it can be living and interesting! It's always a fabulous adventure, each visit is an adventure because we discover people from different countries with different levels of knowledge. We will follow in the footsteps of Romanus Gladiatus or a city dweller from the Middle Ages. We will discover clues from these distant times like Sherlock Holmes would do. Let's step out of our history books and set out to conquer the city with our eyes and ears!
Urban Politics walks (Mescline Bolin):
We can plan urban politics walks for some audiences (students in some specializations as city politics, sociocultural animations, cultural event planifications). The guide is Mescline Bolin, PhD in Urban Politics at London University. First, what is the urban politics? Urban politics is a group of politics which want to reduce development gaps within cities. It aims to restore republican equality in the poorest neighborhoods and improve the living conditions of their residents, who experience higher unemployment and school dropouts than elsewhere, and difficulties in accessing services and care, notably. The urban politics is born in 1973-1983 after the Thirty Glorious Years at the time of the first riots. During this 2-hours walk, we'll try to understand how the city was built to face certain problems, how space influences our perception of the world. What's at stake through wide avenues or the establishment of secure bicycle parks near a train station? As we read through sedimentary rocks, skeletons and manuscripts to get an idea of the climate in France during the Jurassic or even the life of the first farmers in Mesopotamia, we can decipher urban furniture to understand what is at stake in our city. We find almost the same themes as for the historical visit except for the domestic and private sphere. We'll talk about:
-trade
-mobility
-climate change
-accomodation
-leisure industries
-social conflicts and violence of police.
We, the AFFE's Network, we started from the observation that we often talked about the city and its monuments in the past. Why always want to talk about the city and its inhabitants in the past tense when the city evolves every day and it is interesting to understand the world in which we live while walking around? So let's go out and see how the city fits into the present!
Historic walk for Focus on January, 27th-28th, 2024 in Tours organized by Animafac (Namfone Marie Dutour in collaboration with Mescline Bolin):
For the Focus Tours organized by Animafac which has been taken place on January, 27th-28th, 2024 at the University of Tours, our association AFFE has prepared a city tour in Tours. Focus is an event which brings together 200 student associations gathered for a weekend to exchange ideas, train, share good practices and make discoveries to go further in their commitment. What we've suggested, it was a special Tours' 2-hours free walk for a group up to 30. It was specially done for student associations et organizations. We had two goals:
-Take a tour of the main monuments of Tours
-Understand some aspects of life in the Middle Ages through a few anecdotes.
Our start postulat was: when we talk about history, we often see wars and dates but history can be lived through a good city tour. Through the walk, when we see around us, we can remark epic landscapes, dizzying ideas and sometimes even things we continue to use on a daily basis. The theme was the city at the Middle Ages but we've decided that our route would be a mix between the old and the most modern city after reflections:
-University
-Library
-Pedestrian bridge - Tours' castle
-Cathedral
-François-Sicard square
-Vinci
-Tours train station
-Jean-Jaures square
-Charlemagne Tower
-Monster square
-University.
We were complete and it were very good news. The tour pleased to the associations which didn't know Tours' city. There were some points to upgrade but the most important was that the group was very satisfied and enthousiast!