Greeters Team Up with “Les Oiseaux de Passage” for More Human Tourism

The Federation France Greeters has chosen to partner with the cooperative platform “Les Oiseaux de passage (trad: Birds of Passage) to make a concrete commitment to the development of a Tourism that places relationship and encounter at the heart of its practices.
What may have seemed utopian even a few years ago is taking shape in a concrete way with “Les Oiseaux de passage”, which create a link between a multitude of positive initiatives and redefine the codes of travel. Each of its members is a Travel Passer who can offer either accommodation, activities, walks, creations, productions and good plans or even local stories. Travellers have access to a travel guide made by the people who practice the territory, all in a spirit of sharing, discovery and exchange.

To learn more about this network, we asked Clément Simonneau and Prosper Wanner of SCIC “Les Oiseaux de passage”:

FG: In a nutshell, can you tell us what’s happening with “Les Oiseaux de passage”?

OdP: Today Birds of Passage is more than 300 members who offer their hospitals and stories on some fifty destinations, mainly in France. After more than a year and a half of activity, our upcoming news is the application of the first results of our research and development program whose objective is to innovate to put hospitality and humans back at the heart of travel. Based on observations of practices, interviews, analyses and studies, we have synthesized 4 hypotheses that we will work in workshops with our members. These workshops will enable us to define together innovative solutions that we will prototype on our “Les Oiseaux de passage” platform in order to strengthen our common tool For another journey that is a source of encounters, hospitality and sharing.

The themes we will be working on this year are the necessary features of a web platform that promotes a quality relationship and cultural discovery. A web platform that allows alternative practices such as local currencies or the exchange of service, the sharing of the non-marketer, over-the-counter trading and solidarity practices. We will also define new legal and contractual frameworks, which can be adapted according to The Travellers and not imposed by the web platform. And finally all the features of sharing, interoperability and dissemination of the content created so that the platform and its content are diffused and not centralized.
Our goal through these projects is to invent a new travel platform without standardization or formatting, a platform that leaves free expression to singularities and non-marketers, that promotes direct contact, dialogue, human and the quality of the relationship, which values individuals, collectives and cooperation instead of encouraging individual and competitive logics.

In parallel to these workshops and developments, the news of “Les Oiseaux de passage” is also the release of a slow tour catalogue and the European Year of Rail. The Slow Tour stay catalogue is built in partnership with travel agencies that are members of “Les Oiseaux de passage” and local hospitality communities. Together we build a dozen stays to allow both individuals and groups to leave “slow”.

As part of the European Year of Rail we are cooperating with producers of stories on the themes and imaginations around rail, we are building a catalogue of thematic stays “Within Rail Range” and we are building a European network of travel agencies to facilitate train travel and other soft mobility across Europe. A call for cooperation was launched at the beginning of the year in order to mobilise those who wish to participate in the development of travel around the theme of the train: see the call for cooperation

FG: You are actively involved in promoting the principles of the Faro Convention that recognize the right to cultural heritage as a human right, how are these 2005 principles more relevant than ever in 2020?

OdP: The Council of Europe Framework Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society adopted in 2005 has been ratified by several countries, including at the end of 2020 by Italy. Without being ratified by France, since the adoption in 2015 of the NOTRelaw, the cultural rights of citizens must be guaranteed in each territory by the joint exercise of cultural competence by the state and local authorities (Article 103). Faro has thus become a shared public responsibility.

This framework convention allows the responsibility for the process of institution of heritage as a social construct to be shared and that a meaning for this common action emerges over time. This framework allows us to come together in the same heritage process, to share our heritage stories in order to foster mutual understanding between us and to make visible the intertwining of our stories. This heritage factory based on listening and dialogue can promote a re-arrangement of our stories among themselves if it has as a framework respect for the dignity of everyone, that is, human rights as proposed by the Faro Convention. Over time, the value of the heritage we have in common can be updated in the light of shared societal issues. The philosopher Paul Ricoeur, in his text What ethos for Europe, speaks of the intertwining of narratives and the arrows of futurity carried in them by the narratives. Walter Benjamin talks about a Once upon a time that meets the Now. The philosopher Hartmunt Rosa calls this the resonance entry.

The “Faro Processes” illustrate the possibility that a cultural and natural heritage can make sense of issues shared by a community at a given time. “The notion of culture should not be seen as a series of isolated manifestations or airtight compartments, but as an interactive process by which people and communities, while preserving their individual specificities and differences, express the culture of humanity. (PIDESC Committee on the Implementation of Article 15) ».

Greeters are part of this process. They are not intended to replace any scientific authority, as they are sometimes accused of, but to actively participate in this heritage factory based on listening and dialogue. The Faro Convention provides a framework for the engagement of these communities in public action. The current health crisis and the economic, social and environmental crises it exacerbates make us aware of the need for these frameworks of experimentation in public action involving the whole of society under the guise of human rights, the rule of law and democracy.

FG: The Greeters networks of Nantes and Marseille are already participating in the life of “Les Oiseaux de passage”. What do you think the synergy between the greeter community and the other actors of “Les Oiseaux de passage” for a destination can bring?

OdP: In the spirit of the Faro Convention and the right of everyone to participate in the definition of what is heritage, the will of “Les Oiseaux de passage” is to facilitate the formal or informal formation of local hospitality communities with as much diversity as possible. At “Les Oiseaux de passage” we believe in the relevance, see the urgency on certain destinations, to combine travel professionals, cultural actors, inhabitants, producers, local creators and others to promote a development of territories that is sustainable and respectful of fundamental human rights.

In terms of the cultural dimension, facilitating cooperation between these different people makes it possible to formalize and create territory narratives that take into account different points of view. It also makes it possible to make visible certain stories that are unvisited because they are not lived or deemed non-carriers by commercial actors. It also makes it possible not to limit ourselves, or to be misled, with territorial stories only marketing aimed at attracting a category of travelers or new inhabitants.

In terms of the travel and hospitality dimension, the cooperation between these different people allows us to share several points of view, several ways of practicing the territory and several sensibilities. This diversity is the strength of the travel guides offered by Travellers on their destinations. A diversity that makes it possible to formalize an Invitation to the rich and original journey, to meet the local communities and their stories. This allows the association of storytelling producers and hospitality producers so that the trip is a source of encounter and cultural discovery.

It is in this logic that members of passing birds consider it appropriate to foster and strengthen synergies with Greeters communities. If members of the Federation France Greeters want more information or take part in “Les Oiseaux de passage”, you can report to: contact@lesoiseauxdepassage.coop or by clicking here to access the form. You can either join the local community if it already exists on your territory as was the case in Marseille, or open your destination as was the case in Nantes.

Because travel is a story that is written according to the encounters and places visited: LesOiseauxDePassage.coop, For another trip