Image © Jose & MidJourney
I was reading the Monocle magazine and an article made me smile and reflect. Apparently, the Portuguese organization in charge of promoting the country, realized there was an opportunity to boost regional economy and promote industrial manufacturing, and mobilized several entities to offer industrial tourism “ranging from milliners and marble quarries to shoemakers and goldsmiths”. The article states that there are hundreds of industrial heritage sites occasionally opening their door to visitors, though with the decimation of manufacturing in Portugal in the last 20 years, I very much doubt there are hundreds of heritage sites.
I am an industrial designer, I love factories and manufacturing, the machinery, the smell and the heat, material getting transformed via the sound of pounding metal. And the people, majority of them hardened by the work, capable of the most demanding and exquisite work. I grew up as a designer in these factories, from glass blowing to metal transformation, tool making, plastic injection, anything and everything that would be necessary to mass produce the products I designed, with others, for others. Today, visiting far less factories, I collect videos of “how it’s done” abundant on the Internet, and I share with other industrial geeks like me. But even though, in some cases, I was at a factory once, perhaps spent 3 hours there in some stage of the process and never went back, it never felt like tourism.
There are all sorts of definitions of tourism. A quick search on some of the quotes from famous poets and writers reveal a not so flattering definition of it. For some it is synonymous with a quick visit to places that show up in some guide, with just enough time for shopping of memorabilia, taste of the local cuisine and photos to upload on Instagram. Others might appreciate a deeper take on the locals, might stay longer, but it seems once you mingle and embrace for a longer period, or if you keep going to the same place, it’s no longer seen as tourism.
I am envisioning a group of people arriving on a bus, with a guide, gathering outside the factory and then entering and walking among the machines and the people working on them, smiling and trying to capture smiles, close ups of materials, debris, snapping photos of everything that moves, some even artistic, perhaps an interruption and a chat with someone already identified as capable of handling English. And I ask myself if this makes any sense, because so much in this feels like a nuisance, above all to those working.
But it might be a small artisan, and she loves the idea of showing her craft, she sees this as opportunity to raise awareness of her work, to build her personal brand, after all she is already on Instagram. I remind myself wineries and olive making farms have been doing this for a long time, and some pay a hefty price and wait for a long time to visit mythical factories like Porsche or Ferrari. So how different is this really, and though I doubt how much brand building for Portugal and for the visited factories this really amounts to, in this new era of so many different types of tourism, what is wrong with industrial tourism?