On the writers trail : a tale of participatory research in literary place building

International audienceLiterature not only takes part in the construction of its own geography in the text, or causes a modification of the urban or rural development, but its geography takes an active part in the construction of a social and political space. Literary tourism is a subfield of cultural tourism which concerns places or routes associated to an authors’ life or artistic production and is a good illustration of literature capacity to build place. In a postmodern context of increasing touristic offer and demand, literary tourism is often seen as a niche, an originality factor and a guaranty of authenticity by local development actors and by visitors. The present communication, consequently, is interested in this dialectic between places and literary works. Our paper approaches literary heritage through a participatory action research which focuses on citizen associations that promote literary heritage of Allier department, France. It also bases itself on the principals of social innovation where all participating actors recognize a necessity to act in this field of local development. Using focus groups and individual interview the research finds an operational goal in producing a web site designed by the associations and with the objective of giving more visibility and accessibility to literary heritage in Allier. By uniting the territorial actors that share literary heritage transmission as their mission, the hope is to give extra value to an otherwise underexploited resource. Finally, the central operational objective is the creation of a Writers trail of Allier that would connect literary places and create a long lasting dynamic in local literary tourism. Through this cooperation process of participatory research, our communication will thus explore the construction process of literary tourism in Allier. It will particularly look at how local association build on literary heritage to produce places and place representations aimed at touristic consumption