The Bureau des guides is the association that brings together walkers, artists, producers, architects and animators associated with the GR2013. We offer you multiple ways to walk away from the metropolitan trail, in order to observe, perceive and know better what surrounds us.
The Bureau des guides continues to journey, to invent and recreate itself, in collaboration with local cultural groups, educational and research establishments, local authorities and groups of inhabitants. In inviting you to venture from the GR2013, the Bureau des guides further enriches the trail, collecting stories, creating new communities and learning how we might inhabit our territory together.
Artistic proposals on the GR2013 during the European Capital of Culture. The year 2013 was the year of approval of the GR2013 but also of a series of projects to explore the metropolitan territory with the artist-designers of the trail, as well as international guest artists.
The GR2013 is :
A 365 km long public space
Cultural facilities crossing 37 municipalities
1 territory of 3000 km2
100,000 visitors in 2013
On the occasion of the inauguration of the GR2013 trail, around ten artistic proposals took place from March to September 2013.
Metropolitan hikes for those involved in public planning
On the edge of the urban and territorial consultation organized by the Interministerial Mission for the Metropolitan Project, the GR2013 Bureau des guides offered teams four days of territorial exploration along the metropolitan path: day walk’s punctuated by discussions and exchanges, meals facing the landscapes shared with the members of the teams but also with the interministerial mission, the elected officials, the participants in the worksites, the inhabitants.
The opportunity to showcase our knowledge prior to the project and pass on to the teams accumulated years of metropolitan culture patiently developed over the course of explorations carried out from 2011, as well as during the projects organized by the prefect Laurent Théry.
Beyond the gesture of hospitality in the invitation to embark on this grand metropolitan hiking project, there was the opportunity to create the GR 2013 project which, from its inception broke with strict cultural frameworks by providing an instrument for reading the territory and then for planning.
Having completed 80 km of walk in the elevated parts of the metropolis, the team placed the themes of landscape, the relationship of city to nature, the spectacular dimension, at the heart of the consultation. Until a few years ago, these themes hardly existed in public discourse, nor at the scale of Marseille, and even less so within the metropolis.
Revealing the high ground of the metropolitan area by show-casing them through the menu, and on the ground, in all their historical dimensions, has forged a concrete bond with the teams. It explains their importance in their proposals and activities.
“We especially remember, thanks to the metropolitan hikes, two characteristic aspects of the territory: its spectacular side, the great points of view that can be discovered while passing from one valley to another, but also its side“ live happily, live hidden ” which leads to improbable cohabitations between activity zones, river, micro beach… ”David Mangin, SEURA team“Metropolitan hikes have really made it possible to make the temptation of planning of the town planner obsolete, and to make him the bearer of stories about the territory.” Fabienne Boudon, Project Manager, LIN team
A one-year, 365 km walking trip through the 38 (37?) municipalities crossed by the GR2013.
Every other Friday in 2013, CARAVAN brought together the architects of CAUE13 and the artists of GR2013 for a day’s walk. Mayors, elected officials, experts and inhabitants of the municipalities linked by the trail. This trip was an opportunity to discover and invent a territory together.
The discussions and exchanges that animated the trajectory allow us now to better understand its history and its geography, to read its landscapes, to discover how it is inhabited and witness its overall planning. Through the caravan’s story, we learn to look at the places we live in with the desire to re-explore them so we might reinvent them.
This year of surveying, discovering and meeting has been recorded, step by step. In each corresponding sound episode – the visitor can browse the logbook of this exploration and begin with CARAVAN the inventory of the heritage of the municipalities, these districts of the “Provençal Hyper-Village”.
CARAVAN is a CAUE13 project, co-produced by Radio Grenouille, in partnership with Wildproject editions and the Cercle des Marcheurs.
Chronology of the main artistic and civic actions around the rediscovery of the stream
1994 – Launch of the Experimental Integrated Conservation Mission by Christine Breton within the City of Marseille.
2005 – First public walks during the European Heritage Days.
2008 – Launch of Urban Revelation Workshops around the river by ADDAP 13 (youth prevention).
2013 – Le Belvedere project by Ruedi Baur and Civic city, sustainability of heritage walks and release of Le Livre du Ruisseau as part of MP2013.
2016 – Creation, in the wake of the Urban Revelation Workshops, of the integration project of the Cascade des Aygalades led by I’APCAR (City of street arts).
2017 – The rise of the stream, artistic expedition offered by the GR2013 guides office.
2018 – Creation of a monthly meeting “Un dimanche aux Aygalades” by the Cité des arts de la rue, La Cité de l’Agriculture and the Bureau des guides du GR2013, articulating conferences around the river, farmers’ market, walks and artistic programming.
2019 – Creation of the Collectif des Gammares which organizes Operation Plastic Valley, the first collective action of the springs at the mouth of the stream.
2020 – Release of the first edition of La Gazette du Ruisseau by the Gammares collective.
The Bureau des guides takes the time to bring together the knowledge of residents and experts, in order to find the true measure of the place, to recognize this unique piece of territory and to share the story of these field studies. After the first expedition in 2017 with IMBE, as part of Euromediterranée survey, the explorations created a series of events which culminated in 2019, in the birth of a new collective: Les Gammares. Bringing together numerous associations and actors active along the stream, in order to take care of this urban river; promoting better knowledge sharing, linking initiatives and territories in the stream’s watershed, and initiating common actions.
Performances, concerts, exhibitions, readings, dance … Discover the program.
Rides
Walks, particularly those led by the department’s hiking clubs will be organized around the sites to explore the places. Here hikers will share their local knowledge and their stories.
Moments of contemplation and discovery
Each 1001 Nights meeting will give rise to a collective and participatory moment during sunset. The public will receive the “Pléiades” (booklet of texts from the collection and the universe of the invited artists) and will be invited to participate in this public reading, imagined with the help of Radio Grenouille.
An invitation to inhabit the place
Thanks to the Caravanade designed by the Yes We Camp collective, each camp will offer a friendly and comfortable space. Small catering, refreshment bar or caravan-library depending on the location and artistic proposals.
And stories
Through the publication of a special newspaper imagined with the help of Ventilo and thanks to your participation, because perhaps you too know metropolitan tales …
Walking is the scale for reading the landscape, particularly suitable for those who want to understand and feel the universe that surrounds us.
Change posture, be open to the knowledge of some, to the memory of others, to enter into the physical and historical depth of a territory, of a landscape.
Create a dynamic and poetic relationship with your daily activities …
The walker is no longer a distant observer but participates, alters themselves through the exchange, in listening and in the encounters one makes while walking.
“Understand its past, its present uses and the challenges of its future.”
It is this approach to walking, which reveals, updates, poetizes what is there, the Bureau des Guides invites you to put into practice through these three “methods”:
They are tailor-made and in collaboration with upstream teachers. They give rise to further research work after the trip is over.
OBJECTIVE: Create group cohesion, meet each other in different ways, apply theoretical knowledge, initiate a theme starting from the field …
DURATION: From one to several days, possibility of bivouac.
AUDIENCE: Students in architecture, art and design, town planning, landscape …
Workshops | Individual
On a defined theme, these training periods open to everyone are moments of sharing and pooling of knowledge. They can give rise to a joint resolution.
OBJECTIVE: To enrich one’s knowledge and practice, meet project partners, discover a territory …
DURATION: From one to several days, possibility of bivouac.
AUDIENCE: Students, Artists, Professionals of culture and territorial development …
Workshops | Teambuilding
Moments of reflection for a team: the putting into practice and the confrontation of knowledge, out in the field, brings out new ideas, questions, laying the foundations for collective work.
OBJECTIVE: Confront theory and practice, create group cohesion, meet each other in different ways, initiate a theme inspired by the landscape.
DURATION: ½ day to several days.
AUDIENCE: Technicians from local authorities, culture and regional development professionals.
5 years of exploring city / nature relationships in the metropolitan areas of Aix-Marseille Provence and Toulon Provence Méditerranée
By transposing the practice of long-distance hiking in our metropolitan areas, the actions emerging from the Nature for city Life project inform the various actors of the city (inhabitants, urban planners, elected officials, students, etc.) on the role of urban green and blue infrastructures in the face of to climate change. A narrative approach based on sensitive exploration is favored, favoring an active appropriation of the issues and an involvement of the participants through walks, thematic workshops, bivouacs, editorial and observation tools or even the design of a new path in the metropolis. Toulon Provence Mediterranean.
On the GR2013, monthly walks are thus offered by Nicolas Mémain and the SAFI collective, and in the Toulon metropolis, by Paul-Hervé Lavessière, with a view to the construction of a Metropolitan Path of Greater Toulon.
During 5 years, these guides, will develop, a small popular university of metropolitan ecology – a “public service mission to think, to walk, to transmit”.
The Nature 4 City Life project is a project coordinated by the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur Region, with the city of Marseille, the Aix-Marseille Provence metropolis, the Toulon Provence Méditerranée metropolis, the Nice Côte d’Azur metropolis, Air Paca, the Ecology Population Development Laboratory (AMU university), the GR2013 guides office.
To approach from different angles, and with different scales, this relationship between city and nature, we identified some specific themes and particular territories to explore during these 5 years.
1 / River monographs
Coastal rivers, canals, basins… blue infrastructures are the basis of green infrastructures, and therefore structural elements of the metropolis. They allow you to explore specific environments in several municipalities and also to appreciate various methods of development and management.
2 / The green network practiced
The Green Trame Strolls offers you to practise a section of the “green trame” on foot by experiencing the relationship to movement in concrete terms, and in focusing particularly on an animal or plant species in its use of the green corridors.
3 / The Etang de Berre
In 2020, public events to disseminate the culmination of a long investigation into the ecological issues of the Etang de Berre.
4 / The Ruisseau des Aygalades
From the collective an awareness emerges concerning the role of a coastal river such as the Aygalades, with walks offered from its source to its mouth.
5 / Foresta
IIn the context of the Foresta project which gradually installs representations, uses and modes of management of an urban park based on a former industrial wasteland, the principle of Walking Conversations is to invite scientists to walk in situ, in order to gather the ecological stories of the place, through sharing of various knowledges.
6 / Toulon Provence Mediterranean
The walks are intended to bring out both a new metropolitan path, and an understanding of ecological issues for both professionals and residents.
