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Description

Bureau des Guides - GR2013: a Metropolitan Trail of Stories and Encounters

The Bureau des Guides - GR2013 is a collective of walking artists, researchers, and local residents who explore and reinterpret the vast territory crossed by the GR2013, a 365-km metropolitan hiking trail created for Marseille’s year as European Capital of Culture. Unlike conventional trails, the GR2013 moves through natural, urban, and peri-urban landscapes, linking 38 municipalities across the Aix–Marseille–Provence Metropolis.

The Bureau brings together those who use walking as a tool to read, understand, and narrate a territory. Their practice sits at the intersection of contemporary art, environmental studies, and territorial planning: a place where geography, ecology, architecture, and local memory meet at walking pace. By organizing walks, field explorations, collective research, artistic performances, and small “roadbooks” combining geography, literature, and local knowledge, they cultivate a shared understanding of places that are often overlooked or misunderstood.

Through its collaborations with residents, cultural institutions, schools, researchers, and public authorities, the Bureau des Guides experiments with new ways of inhabiting a metropolitan territory. Each walk becomes an act of inquiry: a way to reveal what remains hidden in plain sight, to confront preconceived notions, and to build community through the exchange of stories and perspectives.

Influenced by Land Art, psychogeography, and the international lineage of walking artists, the Bureau des Guides invites people to observe Marseille differently—beyond its iconic clichés—revealing the fragile, ordinary, and surprising landscapes that define everyday life. It is an invitation to look closely, think collectively, and invent new narratives for the places we share.

Where / Served area: Marseille, France

Website: www.bureaudesguides-gr2013.fr

Why on TravaPowa: Bureau des Guides - GR2013 embodies a form of slow, interpretive, and community-rooted travel that aligns deeply with TravaPowa’s commitment to cultural awareness and regenerative tourism.

• It promotes a territory-based, community-led approach where residents, artists, and walkers co-create new narratives of place (SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities).
   
• It reconnects people with local ecologies, encouraging environmental curiosity and a renewed sensitivity toward peri-urban and natural landscapes (SDG 15: Life on Land).
   
• It values intangible cultural heritage, turning stories, walks, and collective memory into shared educational tools and public knowledge (SDG 4: Quality Education).
   
• It challenges extractive models of tourism by proposing low-impact, art-driven exploration rooted in local relationships rather than consumption (SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production).

Bureau des Guides shows how walking can become a cultural act—an opportunity to engage with place, learn from communities, and imagine more inclusive and sustainable metropolitan futures.

Take Action:  Want to enable impactful youth mobility and boost your CSR/ESG commitment on the topics of regeneration and social inclusion? Get in touch with the TravaPowa team.

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© Image credit: Bureau des Guides - GR2013. All rights reserved