Margaux Perrin

My thesis was on the canuts, the silk weavers of the Croix-Rousse, and their revolts in 1831 and 1834. I spent three years reading police reports and workshop accounts in the municipal archives, and at some point I realised I would rather tell these stories on the actual stairs where they happened. So I got my guide card and here I am. I live on the slopes, in a canut flat with four-metre ceilings built to fit a Jacquard loom, and I still get lost in the traboules sometimes. My walks are for people who like to know why a street looks the way it does. I talk about work, money, strikes and the women who did most of the weaving, not only about pretty courtyards. I speak French, English and German, the last from a year in Krefeld, another silk town. My sessions now run live on video from Lyon: I carry the phone, you watch from wherever you are and ask anything.