The Tour of All Tours Bath video

A short promotional video of the Bath Tour of All Tours.

The Bath Tour of All Tours

After a hard Summer of intensive tourism in and around Bath, it was finally time to offer up my tour of the Bath tours in response.

This is not a critical review of the tour, like the majority of the posts on the blog are, it is something simpler: some pictures of the tour and descriptions of what they are or what they remind me of. So, to begin, this is us in front of the Abbey where a moment later an official emerged and shooed us away with the choice words, "This is not a theatre, it's an abbey!" 

Here I am describing the horse drawn carriage tour of Bath. The carriage wasn't doing the rounds during the morning tour but in the afternoon we did cross it more than once. As you can see the group is very mixed with younger and older people, residents, students, strays and visitors all tagging along.

The City Sightseeing Bus is parked in the background and one afternoon an actual guide who gives tours for the company joined us. I make a point of only saying things I would be fully prepared to say to the people who give the tours I am talking about, but I must say that of all the stops this is perhaps the one where I give the most critical comments so I was unsure how they would be taken. I need not have been so concerned; the guide turned out to be openminded, amusing and not at all like the colleague of his I talk about on my tour. There were in fact a number of interjections from different people I talked about at different junctures of this tour. 

The tour is not all ironic jokes, as might be expected from the description of it. Whilst there is an obvious humour to the proposition of making a guided tour of tours, the tour would quickly exhaust itself if it only used the idea as a platform for gags and nothing else. Rather, the format offered a readymade way to talk about the city and its users, tourists and locals alike. I felt this tour was rather conventional, formally speaking, and it was the subject matter that marked it out as different. I suspect I'll want to stretch the formal boundaries of what constitutes a guided tour a bit further with subsequent tours, but making this one within a stricter frame was a good challenge and seemed to work well for the location.

I was particularly happy with the last minute addition of the sign on a stick. It is so simple a form of advertising that it is easy to overlook and immediately focus at online platforms and suchlike. The sign on a stick, however, did bring some people to us and, just as importantly, it provided a nice presence throughout the tour reminding us of what we were doing and announcing it to passers by too.    

Speaking of simple technology, the other item which proved incredibly useful was the portable speaker I wore around my waist and was connected to by a hands free microphone. It allowed me to be heard easily above the passing traffic in places like this stop opposite Nelson's former residence. When I took the People Behind the Plaques tour, which stopped to talk about the same building, they had to withdraw round the corner where Nelson's old digs could barely be seen, just in order to be heard. I do turn the speaker down when it is not required, it can be off-putting to be barked at unnecessarily, but more often than not, it was useful to raise the voice above the traffic and crowds that flood the city centre at weekends.  

Opposite Thermae Bath Spa I shared my experience of the Spa Audio Tour and this was interesting for the fact that people did indeed have their own opinions about the spa, its history and the process of privatisation that I introduced. What's more, they have quite different opinions with some regarding it far more favourably than others, who consider it plain robbery. One lady was so animated by the subject that she took the opportunity to go not only into the history, at some length, but also into the current campaign to heat the swimming pool with the thermal water which, she finally told us, she was one of the moving forces behind.

We cut a tourist picture walking through the streets looking for all the world like just another group on the UESCO merry go round. This forward progression came through in what I said too. Unlike some previous tours which were more episodic, this one really tried to build a narrative as it went along, drawing upon previous spots and constructing a history and frame of reference of its own. This history was not anything like a chronological one giving a history of the city or of a person, it was restricted to a history of our tour. It self-consciously built up a story of sorts from the tours, a story in which the city itself is the chief protagonist with additional voices provided by tour guides and tourists alike. 

Here we are looking at the City Trail which, I was surprised to discover, one or two people were aware of. Inviting the group to follow the trail and placing myself no longer at the front was a way to let the group play a more active role in the tour, something I liked because it got people talking to one another. This gentle encouragement to interact was effective but was always delicately balanced with a desire to avoid contriving embarrassing situations. Street entertainers tend, too often for my liking, towards the latter so I was careful to create space for those who wanted to watch in silence while setting the general tone as one that encouraged interaction between me and the public and within the tour goers too.

Here we are dowsing. I was intrigued to notice how this works for some people and not others. From observation, about two thirds of people got a response from the dowsing rods. There were one or two who were keen to make it not work as they were skeptical about the whole procedure and it seems mind might have been able to suppress the movements of the rods. What this all means I cannot say, it will have to rest as an observation.

A proper Bath weekend moment came towards the end of the tour when we were asked to bulk out a group photo for a hen party.

Finishing up at the Royal Crescent seemed to work fine and it offered us a gentle stroll back into the city centre where we repaired for food and refreshment. Over the three days I had a number of interesting conversations with people who were on the tour, each had their own take on it and on the city itself. I am fortunate to have had such generous people come along and even more so to have had one, Richard White, write about the tour on his blog, which is worth looking at more generally being based around landscape, arts and walks. He concludes, "A wonderful and surreal experience" which is in no small part due to the interventions of all the various people we encountered along the way who somehow became a part of the tour. I should conclude however, by thanking not just the inadvertent participants but also the very steady and significant practical support and advice from ICIA who commissioned the tour and visitBath who supported the project too. Thank you and see you on the next tour!

New Tour of All Tour Dates Added for London & Beijing

The Tour of All Tours a guided tour of guided tours. You've read the writing and the reviews of tours here on the blog, these tours of tours are where it all comes together and gets put into action. The tour is as much an art performance as it is a guided tour, if you are in London or Beijing come and see for yourself.

Beijing Saturday October 11th 2PM 
Starting Point: Bookworm, Building 4, Nan Sanlitun Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing
Cost 100 RMB

London Tuesday October 28th 7PM 
Starting Point: outside Richmix, 35-47 Bethnal Green Road, London E1 6LA
Cost £8

Bookings: info ( a t ) billaitchison.co.uk

The Sanlitun Tour: a conceptual tour of Beijing's tours

This blocking of the blog from within China is why there have been fewer postings of late and that is a pity as there has been plenty to write about. The tour to The Great Wall was very silly and they managed to make something that could have been quite beautiful and impressive a great deal less than what it is. On the other hand, the way the day unfolded and the differences between Chinese coach tours and those I am more familiar with was so vast that it was worthy of a study unto itself. 

Last weekend I gave the first Tour of Tours here in China for the Bookworm's Literary Festival and it went really well. The smog did not interfere, the weather was finally warm and it was a pleasure to be outside, something that has not been the case for a while. That helped enormously. The tour was a particularly conceptual one as there are no real tours that I took of the area and which I could report on. Everything was referring to something else or was a projection of another location onto Sanlitun. As such it made for an unusual sort of tour with the weight falling on talking about tours. We passed through Yashow Market a place bristling with fake branded products and lost a few people there, such is the danger of passing through a shopping place. In all however, it was a good start to Beijing tours and one that will be built upon in the coming months.

Advance notice now about workshops that will be given on performing in public space using guiding principles. There will be workshops in Beijing in May and in London in July, others to be announced.    

The Littlebredy Tour

Little Bredy or Littlebredy, the village gets spelt both ways, is indeed little. It's a village in South Dorset that I was shown around in preparation for the arts festival Inside Out that will be held there next September. I shall be constructing a tour for the festival which takes the South Dorset Ridgeway as its frame and Littlebredy as its focus. 

The day began in the village hall with talks about the area and an opportunity to meet the other artists. We assembled outside later in the afternoon to take a walking tour.

This tour led us past a number of points that the artists had selected to site their work in. Here for example is one of the artists with a plan of the landscape artwork she will create showing it to us and describing how it will sit upon the side of the hill. 

There was no precise tour guide leading this walk so there was no group commentary but instead a straggle of artists following a route that had been more or less decided in advance. The leader at the front of the group changed from time to time but was always one of the festival team who knew the route. As there was no ongoing commentary it was far more a chance to walk around the village and ridgeway and talk with the other artists. The going underfoot became increasingly muddy as it had been raining recently. There was much sidestepping of puddles.

We encountered our first real obstacle with a series of gates, this being one of them. We had to clamber over them but when it came to the dog in our group this variously meant coaxing it to squat under the gate or lifting it up and passing it over the gate. Undignified.

We then met the livestock. They took us for intruders and a showdown ensued. After a few nervous advances they scattered and let us pass. This was one of those moments that divided the group into those of us familiar with animals and farms and those of us more familiar with the Coffee Republic and city life.

We then came to an impasse by a farm at the bottom of a hill. There ensued much consultation of maps and smart phones, which started failing as we drove deeper into the folds of the South Dorset Ridgeway. Finally we had to ask the farmer.

Our path was an unlikely overgrown one that passed beside the cow shed. They eyed us keenly, they don't get many walkers coming this way.

And where you have cows you have cow slurry. Our path passed directly through several ankle deep, hold-your-nose stretches of manure and mud. There was no alternative but stoically soldiering on and hopping that it did not get any deeper.  

We reached an abandoned chapel in the woods some distance from Littlebedy as the light was failing. Later than expected with the night closing in we took it in and made an exit for the road which seemed to be some distance still.

By the time we reached the road it was a dark and not long after a taxi arrived to whisk us through the winding roads back to the village. This ended the first day and first part of the village tour but there was more to follow the next day.

As I had expressed an interest in tours I was offered a tour around the village's visitor attraction, The Walled Garden. I was joined by some of the artists and our guide was both responsible for maintaining the garden and showing people around so she knew the place very well.

She told us that various people visited the garden such as ramblers and horticultural societies from as far away as Somerset. I asked her if she could offer her standard visitor tour so I could get a sense of it and she agreed however as we started looking around I realised that what I was experiencing was something quite different. The artists were asking about the buildings and looking inside in order to see if they might be useful locations to site artworks and events in. Our guide was obliging and shared what she knew about the places and I realised that I was not on a normal visitor's tour but was instead getting a different sort of tour: the artist's site visit tour. Once I realised this was what was happening I relaxed more into it and took it for what it was rather than wishing it to be a different sort of tour.

With a storm forecast for the next day there were preparations afoot to limit possible damage to the garden by taking down temporary structures such as this gazebo. The approaching storm was a bit of a conversation topic in general over the weekend as it was being talked up as if it was going to be a devastating hurricane when in fact it turned out to be far less.  

Perhaps as a nod to our curiosity and the nature of the group we were treated to the ghost story. While our guide acknowledged she was not a believer in the ghost she did not disappoint us by omitting the fact that a ghost was said to haunt the garden. Coming on the back of the Haunted Holborn Tour I'm starting to see a strange connection between ghosts and tourism. This will have to be investigated a whole lot more. 

Overall then, this was a very relaxed and informative introduction to the village for what will be a new commission for The Tour of All Tours. I'll be returning here next year to develop the project and have many ideas of tours to reference. As it is not a saturated site I will have to be creative and this may in fact mean the work refers out into the society more than it might do in a place where there is an overwhelming amount of tours already in place. The festival will take place in September next year, details and updates will stream in before then. 

The Cambridge Tour

I made a brief visit to Cambridge for Sampled Festival at The Junction. The concept of this year's festival was to show the artistic process by presenting work in all stages of development, including featuring a number of artistic pitches. It was in this way that I came to tell people about how I saw a Tour of All Tours in Cambridge taking shape. 

I gave it as a small tour in its own right, sharing my ideas in three locations around and outside of the building. It was a type of performance in its own right: a marketing sort of performance. 

It went fine as I knew what I was talking about the ideas still being fresh from Stuttgart. What's more, Cambridge is quite a touristic sort of place so I think people could relate to the concept quite easily. Whether it happens there or not is now quite outside of my capacity but if not there then somewhere else soon enough. It is ironic that, just as tourism tends to exploit a winning formulae and reproduce it worldwide, I can see how The Tour of All Tours can also be made and remade in different locations. It will have to work with different conditions and be adaptable much in the way tourism does.

There was time in Cambridge to briefly catch a rather unique attraction. A busker inside a rubbish bin playing Bob Dylan. I can safely say this was a first for me. He chose the right spot, in front of King's College Chapel which is the city's No. 1 tourist pull.

The Rain Tour

This was the  second day of giving tours and the weather has been absolutely terrible. If it were any worse and we would have had to cancel the tours altogether. It has been raining on and off all day and temperatures have not risen above single figures.

Still, it could have been worse, at least it was only a guided tour that was soddened by the weather. I noticed that at the church next door (they of the loud and early bells) there was a wedding taking place today. I took a picture of one of the cars waiting for the couple to emerge as it connects two quite separate threads of The Tour of All Tours. 

So the first is quite simple. Unless I am very much mistaken, this is the same model and colour of Porsche that I sat behind in the Porsche Museum last week. Having sat inside it I now understand better how it can be easy for those driving such cars to feel themselves to be a cut above the normal driver. The other tangential reference is to the Croatian flag hanging out the window. Yesterday I got talking about the inspiration of the project and talked quite a bit about the situation in Dubrovnik with guided tours, how the city centre is flooded with too many tourists in too small a space and how this gave me my initial inspiration for The Tour of All Tours. So this project was in a way inspired by Croatia and in another way was also informed by work I did with with the Zagreb-based group Shadowcasters who make very specific types of city projects integrated into the life of the city. This is particularly on my mind as I'll be returning to Croatia in 8 days to begin working on a new Shadowcasters project, directed by Boris Bakal, which will be a performance that takes places in the streets of Dubrovnik for the Summer Festival. It is always satisfying when life offers some crossovers, patterns and form in the endless flood of events that all too often defy any clear logic. OK, calling this logic is stretching the definition of the word, but I do find it important to create my own personal narratives so I can feel central to the events I experience rather than a witness of stuff.

As the weather was so rotten today the pictures are taken from the newspaper review of yesterday's performance that has just been published. Unless google translate is playing rotten tricks on me it seems positive, which is always welcome, though I have learnt not to be too concerned about negative reviews. I don't mean to say that the press is not important, it is, but that is more as a publicity concern. Speaking of which, we also got another write up HERE. What was in fact more valuable for me thinking through where to go next with The Tour of All Tours was having a chance to have a good conversation with people about the tour.

I have to thank the newspaper's photographer Max Kovalenko for these two photographs, which I am using here, as today was so wet I didn't get any pictures of the tour.

This was day two of the performances and the tour is settling and I am finding a rhythm. There are places I still search for words and some ideas that are not wholly realised so it remains a fluid event but I feel more in command. Something that was quite nice, for example, was coming across some of the other tours and having something to say about them. This can still go further but I already like the unpredictable side of this, as you never really know where and when you might run into another tour. Numbers today were small, due to the weather, but those who came were well prepared in waterproof jackets and warm clothing, with the exception of a French woman who looked thoroughly chilled (in the wrong way) by the end of the tour. The group warmed up over coffee and cake at Cafe Nast and we got to both hear and tell many stories about all the various tours and trips we had all made. A nice way to end a day of cold and drizzle. 

The 11AM Premiere Tour

Today the Tour of All Tours was officially launched with the first performance taking place at 11AM and a second at 4PM. I'm more accustomed to an evening schedule for first performance, but this being a city tour, I was working on a tourist's timetable. That's not to say I have never done morning performances before, I have, but it is remains a rarity.

Making this sort of performance, there is no delineated backstage and frontstage. From the moment I arrived at the tourist information I was in the zone. However, the 'zone' was not the same as that in a more formal performance. The situation here is an entirely different one. During the time spent waiting for everyone to arrive, I borrowed a trick from a tour guide I saw in Oxford: chat to people in a collective sort of way (as opposed to a private conversation) and ask them where they are from. This might sound like a dumb thing but it had some genuine use. I got a better sense of who the people taking the tour were and what their level of English was (it happened to be quite good) and it created a sense of us being a group and not just a collection of individuals who have happened to have chosen the same tour. Once we were all there we set off and the tour got moving.

I am not in the habit of declaring performances of mine a success, that sort of thing is other people's business. I'm much more interested in what happens, what thoughts it provokes and how to act upon them. From that point of view, then, I see that the tour works in different ways for people who are visitors and for people who know the city. For the visitor it actually does fulfil a touristic role of informing them about the guided tours on offer, albeit in a novel way, and for the local it introduces them to a side of the city they usually bypass. This is a good basis upon which to build. However, what it does not yet do is propose a highly fractured experience, it tends to remain within the conventional guided tour format. I'm happy enough with this as a starting point, but I will be curious to see how it can start to stretch this form and still fulfil its two basic functions, as outlined above.

Once we were done with the tour we went to a nearby cafe and had a good discussion about the tour and I should thank Thomas, Eric, Andrea and Kaspar for their generous feedback. Also a big thank you is in order for Art Tours more generally as they have been the first people to support this project and have made very useful practical and artistic contributions along the way.  

With the premiere out of the way, I found this nice fountain in the city centre filled with washing up liquid and foaming over. This is a very popular game in the shopping centre in Portsmouth where I grew up, and while some people hate it, I have to say I have always understood the attraction and have wanted to do it myself, but never quite gotten round to it.

The afternoon saw Andreas giving the tour and doing the pointing instead of me.

From the point of view of a performer, it is really helpful to be able to see someone else giving the performance when you yourself have also made it. It takes it out of your own head and into something much more concrete. I can look at how Andreas gives the tour and see many things that I can learn from. I also notice that he gives the tour in a somewhat different way than I do and I have to distinguish between what is the tour, and what is the tour guide. He does some things in his own way, and they work for him but would be foolish to copy. So there is this process taking place right now of the two tours, the English and the German, starting to find their own directions according to the different languages, cultures and  personalities of the guides.

Finally, here is the forecast for tomorrow. Terrible. Cold and wet. I will be curious who, if anyone, will come in such miserable conditions.

The Practice Tour: pictures

It is already past midnight and I have just finished the rewrites of the tour script. It has been a very long and useful day. All the material is there, it has just been a matter of finding the right way to introduce it and to learn and remember it all. Tomorrow the first tour starts at 11AM so I'm not going to write more just now but will instead just leave some images of the practice runs Andreas and I made earlier and get some sleep.