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Fête des Voisins: All you need to know about 'neighbours day' in France

The Local France
The Local France - [email protected]
Fête des Voisins: All you need to know about 'neighbours day' in France
Archive image of a "fête des voisins" street party (Photo by STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN / AFP)

Friday marks France's Fête des Voisins or neighbours festival, a celebration that has spread across the world after it was created in France. Find out how the discovery of a dead woman's body prompted the movement, and how you're expected to take part.

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So what is La Fête des Voisins?

It's an event held on a Friday every year aimed at bringing neighbours closer together or at least encouraging them to go beyond the usual "Bonjour", which is what most residents stick to, especially in big cities. This year, it's on Friday, June 2nd.

It's designed as a special day where residents off blocks of flats or streets can actually share a moment of conviviality with each other and even perhaps make new friends.

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Or for some people it could be the day for putting all those disputes about your noisy kids or neighbours' late night partying behind you and use it as an opportunity to smooth over relations.

The event's official international website says the celebration marks "the opportunity to reconnect with the values of solidarity, brotherhood and friendship that should be at the forefront of neighbourly relations."

Although it's fair to say the Fête des Voisins is not for everyone.

One Parisian told The Local that it's the day everyone avoids. Asked to explain more she said: "I see my neighbours everyday, why would I want to have an apéro with them on a Friday?"

That's not quite the idea of togetherness that the founders of La Fête des Voisins hoped to generate.

So what are we expected to do?

Basically, each resident in an apartment block or on a local street is invited to make "a simple gesture", to invite their neighbours for a lunch or a dinner, take round a tasty treat or bunch of flowers - anything that will allow an opportunity to interact with each other. 

In big apartment blocks in cities neighbours usually descend with a few bottles of wine or beer as well as snacks to the courtyard. Essentially, they have their daily aperitif with the neighbours instead of their friends or stuck inside their flat.

All city or social housing organisations are welcome to participate in proceedings.

If you're invited to one, remember the message is of solidarity and togetherness.

If you've not been invited to anything, there's nothing stopping you from knocking on your neighbour's door and saying hello. You could even invite them for a beer or a coffee. Anything goes really, just be friendly.

So what are you waiting for? Go out and say hello.

There's plenty more information here (in French).

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READ ALSO: How to make friends with your French neighbours

How many people actually take part?

Well it's growing in popularity each year. An estimated 10 millions good French neighbours take part every year. Since it began more than 20 years ago, it has spread around the world.

Covid-19 pushed many people to actually meet their neighbours. During the lockdowns, WhatsApp groups sprung up in apartment buildings and neighbourhoods to counteract loneliness. Applications like NextDoor and MesVoisins also grew in popularity, in large part to help create a communal space to assist elderly or vulnerable people during the pandemic. This will be the first fête des voisins in somewhat normal circumstances, so we'll see if those pandemic-era connections were built to last.

So how did it all start?

Back in 1997, Frenchman Atanse Périfan had the misfortune of learning that an elderly neighbour had died inside his apartment block in the 17th arrondissesment of Paris - and nobody noticed for months.

He saw the bigger picture, realising that there wasn't nearly enough neighbourly love all around.

In a bid to rectify this, Périfan invented Fête des Voisins in 1999 and urged everyone living in his block of flats to come out for a drink and a snack on that day.

The following year he took the idea nationwide and since then it's spread beyond France's borders.

So do neighbours in France get along?

Obviously it depends where you live but what is clear is that in big cities where people live in big blocks where sound insulation is severely lacking, tensions can be strained.

A survey found that for 40 percent of French people the worst kind of neighbours were those with young children, followed by party animals and those learning to play musical instruments. 

And the same survey revealed that the biggest source of neighbourly disputes in France was, as you might have guessed, noise. Followed by fences and animals.

But Fête des Voisins is a day for putting all those disputes aside.

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Join the conversation in our comments section below. Share your own views and experience and if you have a question or suggestion for our journalists then email us at [email protected].
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[email protected] 2019/06/07 18:00
We have get togethers in our building since the new presidency was elected, btw the president is an American muslim, great guy. Everybody has fun and the food is great and you get to know other people that live in this 10 floor building and we find each other in other places and greet each other. These fetes are great. I'm in DC,USA.
[email protected] 2019/05/24 12:30
I got to know something of my neighbours only when it came to moving out of my apartment in the 15è (Paris), and advertised bits of furniture etc for sale and a number of them came to inspect. In the eight years before that, it was rare to get beyond banal greetings in the lift.

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