Athens Travelers: Athens as introduced by its youth. Individual trajectories are turned into “in common” city explorations

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One of Sarcha’s ongoing programs has the title “Athens Travelers: Athens as introduced by its youth. Individual trajectories are turned into “in common” city explorations”.

The young participants of the Athens Travelers program transfer their knowledge/practice to their co-peers and work together to create a number of alternative guided city tours.

In the current economic circumstances in which despair reigns supreme and the youth faces social exclusion and the fast raising unemployment rate, the Athens Travelers program creates an opening for the youths’ innovative force; it aims to bring together young people from different educational, social and cultural backgrounds and the young with fewer opportunities (the young unemployed, immigrants, with special skills, ex-delinquents or ex-addicts, etc) to nourish mutual understanding, support and cooperation.

If the 19th century travelers were after the Athenian past, the travelers of this program seek to understand the effects of a city tormented by social unrest and economic instability. That which appears monstrous in today’s Athens might be just the announcement of a future we haven’t thought of. The program asks the city’s youth to choose specific city itineraries and present city features conceived as problematic, that is, as that which holds the potential to reframe.

The young people to whom this program is addressed are:

·    Insiders: the ‘From within’ city connoisseurs

·    Ιn-sight-seers: who see the ‘would-be’ in the place of despair and in the state of deadlock

·    Inciters: who stimulate a reassembling of humans, buildings/unbuilt spaces and nature

This program is a carefully planned type of the so called ‘non formal’ learning and it is designed to have multiple results and added value. The Athens Travelers program will provide not only a productive outlet for the young but it may create an alternative source of income in the long run.

The program is running since March. After a first open call 5 itineraries where proposed and developed in collaboration with the SARCHA team and a program of experimental guided tours open to the general public was implemented.

The itineraries so far are the following:

·    Migrants’  destiny – destination: Greek migrants itineraries in the postwar Athens

·    Degrees of Appropriation: Open City Spaces

·    Who’s Who in the National Garden

·    From one Hill to Another: Everyday Obstacles for Cyclists

·    AfterTaste: Food Itineraries

This first phase of the program proved to be very successful and we are trying to design the next phase with more itineraries and more guided tours.

For more information you can visit

our web page www.athenstravelers.sarcha.gr

our facebook page http://www.facebook.com/athenstravelers.sarcha.gr

or you can follow us at Twitter @athenstravelers

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Who’s the intended traveller?

HI Sarcha, thank you for sharing this. I wonder how the people who joined the tours found out about them? Where they Greek tourists or visitors from abroad? And what was the process of building the tours like…how did people find out and get involved? Sorry, so many questions but I really like the idea and am curious about it :slight_smile:

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The program was communicated thought its site

Hi Nadia,

The whole program was communicated and organised throught its site and social media accounts. Two open calls were issued first inviting young people to propose their itineraries and a second open call inviting people to join the guided itineraries.

The steps in creating the itineraries was the following:

  1. The people interested proposed the basic theme of their itinerary by sumbinting a form of interest at our site

  2. A two-day workshop was organised by the team of Sarcha and the people that proposed the itineraries. All together we configured the themes, titles, points of interest, bibliography and practical organisation of the itineraries.

  3. We implemented some test-tours and  made the necessary changes.

  4. A second open call was issued presenting the itineraries and inviting the people to join them.

  5. The first oficial itineraries - tour guides were made.

The people that joined the itineraries were mostly young people that live in Athens but not necessarily of Greek origin.

I hope I answered your questions.

Lina :slight_smile:

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Rings a bell

Your project reminds me of something I saw in Italy: Angels for travelers. It grew out of Naples, a city that is not doing well and has suffered quite a lot. An acquaintance of mine, a university professor called Stefano, had noticed that despite everything Neapolitans are very proud of their city and are always happy to show visitors arounf. So he thought that, by organizing a voluntary service of “Angels” (what you might call insiders)  he could improve the experience that visitors have of the city and strenghten the ties between inhabitants and outsiders. People liked the idea and started offering the same service (through the same web platform) in many other cities.

Of course your idea is different. The common thread is to use local people as interface between the city and its visitors. How is it going for you?

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The inhabitants become travelers

The main objective of the project is to bring to light city resources that we usually neglet as inhabitants  because of the everyday rush. The inhabitants become travelers within their city and  discover its qualities through the eyes of the youth of Athens.

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Hello Sarcha,

I am very

Hello Sarcha,

I am very proud and happy to see these nice initiatives happening recently in Athens, my lovely city…

I would like to recommend you to take a look at these reports you may find some nice inspiration:

See you in the conference xx