7 family recipes
A digital and gourmet tourist offer on the right bank of Bordeaux
Creating tourist routes in peripheral urban areas is a relatively new idea. Involving the inhabitants and local structures in the design and animation of these same routes, even more so !
Dive into a new form of tourism with 7 family recipes, one of the three experiments of the Courts Circuits (“Short Tours”) project.
While the tourist and heritage resources of the city center of Bordeaux are being taken over by the inhabitants, excursionists and tourists, many field actors are wondering how the peripheral areas of the UNESCO World Heritage site could also benefit from a part of this flow. This is the case of the right bank of Bordeaux. Popular and mixed, the towns and districts that make up the bank have long remained off the radar of tourist attraction. It must be said that the image of this part of the agglomeration has not always been good. Marked by poverty, unemployment and a large collective and social housing, this peripheral area of Bordeaux is one of the so-called “sensitive” or “priority” urban districts of the government’s Urban Policy.
Creating the desire for discovery
In this context, it is not easy to create the desire for discovery… And yet, these territories have resources that are just waiting to be revealed. At any rate, this is what Le LABA is doing with the Courts Circuits (“Short Tours”) project, supported as a social innovation by the Regional Council of Nouvelle-Aquitaine.
The objective of Courts Circuits is simple: to build and propose a digital proximity tourist offer on the right bank of Bordeaux. To include this offer in a socially innovative approach, by relying on local associations and structures on the one hand, and artists on the other hand. The former are in the best position to identify and mobilise resources, while the latter are responsible for restoring them in the most unique way possible.
Very quickly, three tandems were formed to create three atypical courses: Rugby Sound Story imagined between the sound designer Eddy Ladoire and the Lormont – Hauts de Garonne rugby club, The Walk of Samuel J. Lewis created by the author Christophe Dabitch in complicity with two heritage associations of Bassens and finally 7 family recipes designed by the illustrator and graphic designer Guillaumit and Les Gourmandignes (association for the maintenance of peasant agriculture).
A mobile app for independent discovery, events to get together.
Le LABA ask the three tandems to think about how the routes will be proposed to the public. “The digital dimension was certainly essential for us, but not sufficient. We also asked them to think about collective and shared times for visits and meetings, times between the associations involved and the public,” explains Hervé Castelli, in charge of the project at Le LABA.
Today, each of the routes can be followed free of charge and independently with a smartphone and by using the Listeners app, an augmented reality sound system developed by Eddy Ladoire. The principle is quite simple. The sounds, music or texts of the course are triggered when you pass close to one of the geolocalized terminals of the route.
For 7 family recipes, the different stages allow you to discover the architectural, urban, agricultural and natural heritage of the city in connection with the cultural and culinary richness of its inhabitants. All this through stories and recipes. Stéphanie Labadie, cook and sound journalist, worked on the soundtrack, while the artist and graphic designer Guillaumit deployed his geometric shapes, his cartoon spirit and his vitaminized chromatic range to illustrate it.
After the effort, the comfort
The objective of creating geolocated routes on smartphones achieved, the second dimension of the project still needed to be developed: events to be experienced and shared. Thus, for 7 family recipes, the partners imagined a one-day trip to discover gourmet dishes, inhabitants and unusual places in the city of Cenon. Programmed in advance and on reservation, at the rate of 10 €, this walk in 7 stages and 10 km is done in… 6 hours!
In this month of July 2019, equipped with good shoes, about twenty participants are ready to take up the challenge. The walk begins on the heights of Palmer Park, which offers an exceptional panoramic view of Bordeaux and the meeting with Rachelle, a shepherdess who grazes her sheeps there. The opportunity to taste in her company chickpea balls with dates and onions, filled with goat cheese and breaded in fine semolina. The walk then continues in a “hidden house” which opens its doors for the occasion and treats you to a vegetarian bite to eat. Then, stop at Zeina the Lebanese with her Fatouche, an incredibly fresh salad. At the Saint-Romain cemetery, discovery of the ajo blanco, a soup with Spanish accents that reminds us how much this community counts here. A change of atmosphere in Nathalie’s agroecological garden, where walkers are treated to zucchini flowers stuffed with aromatic herbs and nasturtium flowers. Then it’s the turn of the Vielle Cure, a former distillery with remarkable buildings. There, echoing some of the 52 ingredients used at the time to make the liqueur, you can taste an Espuma of lemon balm, mushrooms and cinnamon on crackers flavoured with fennel seeds. End of the agapes (and the long walk) in the company of Florence and Lucas who prepared a raspberry shortbread from the garden and an unforgettable verbena ice cream. “The process of connection between people who had no vocation to meet and build together, between associations, artists and inhabitants is exciting” rejoices Hervé Castelli, while the participants, full, exhausted and happy, separate. They all leave with the feeling of having discovered in a particularly singular and convivial way a little piece of territory that was hitherto unknown to them…
Practical informations
http://www.7recettesdefamille.eu
http://courts-circuits-nouvelleaquitaine.eu
© Sonia Moumen (exchange reporter) for Champs Libres, member of Kus Alliance France
This post is also available in: FrenchGermanPortuguese (Portugal)
Leave a reply