Excursion: From research to everyday practice

Abstract

Over the past decade, Yekaterinburg has witnessed rapid growth in guided tours, which have become a defining feature of modern urban life. The article draws on the authors' personal experience as tour guides and on long-term involvement in the excursion communities “Ekb-gulyayem” and “Territory of the Avant-garde”, both of which actively promote the city's avant-garde architectural heritage in Yekaterinburg.The discussion focuses on the formation of the tour guide community and its role in the life of the city, the development of diverse tour formats, shifting attitudes toward excursions as an updated and increasingly professionalized activity, the ways in which excursions shape both personal and professional identities, and the forms of interaction that emerge between tour guides and various urban environments, communities, and audiences.The authors' excursions function as a form of urban mediation. In the encounter between guide and residents, the city is continually ‘rediscovered', and narratives about urban identity are formed. Local history and personal experience intersect with external, imported images (of the Bauhaus, of in Paris, of in Tel Aviv). On the one hand, this repositions the city and creates additional value; on the other hand, these narratives foster local communities around shared stories and draw new audiences into these discursive practices. Together with exhibitions and public events of the “Territory of the Avant-Garde” project, guided tours contribute to the formation of an urban narrative about Yekaterinburg as the “capital of constructivism” and help sustain a productive dialogue between the city's past and its future.