Scottish tour biz hires guides with extremely unique perspective of streets

A tour business in Scotland has hired guides with a unique perspective — they’re former vagrants who used to live on the streets of the cities they’re now leading visitors through.

The company “Invisible Cities” finds homeless who are trying to change their lives around and provides job training to turn them into guides offering personalized tours.

The business operates in several cities including Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Sonny Murray, a tour guide in Edinburgh, says “Invisible Cities” offered him a way to get off the streets for good.

“It was brutal, to be honest. Because I was addicted to drugs and stuff,” Murray, 45, told AFP of his time on the streets.

“I was shoplifting when I wasn’t in prison, I was coming back out, and I was homeless on the streets, just like a revolving door,” he said.

Murray, who now trains other former homeless people for the tourism trade, said the reformed guides conduct personalized tours to include aspects of the cities that other tours would neglect.

“Crime and punishment” is the theme of Murray’s tours — and he aptly begins at the site of a former gallows.

He also includes a tour of Scotland’s leading homeless charity, The Simon Community, and the Edinburgh Support Hub, where folks who live on the street can come and wash their clothes and have a shower.

“It’s a horrible feeling going about and not being able to have a shower and wash your clothes and that after a couple of days,” Murray told AFP. “So I used to come here all the time.”

A co-founder of “Invisible Cities”, Moulaoui Guery, said they believe the business makes for a more cohesive city, where those that are less fortunate are not simply ignored.

“All of a sudden, to empower people to be visible and the center of attention and lead a tour, I think that’s really, really important,” Guery told the outlet.

“It’s about training more people and having the current guides move on so we can create more opportunities for others to become guides.”

“Invisible Cities,” which began in 2016, currently has trained 130 guides offering its unique tours.