Events & cultural actions.

Liberating education – From prison to society

On 19 June 2024, an open online discussion on prison education marked the completion of a three-year ethnographic study in Second Chance Schools operating in prisons.

Antigoni Efstratoglou, a postdoctoral researcher at the Hellenic Open University, conducted the research and opened the discussion. Giorgos Trantas, director of the educational units at Larissa Prison, moderated the event.

The event was co-organised by the Georgios Zouganelis Network for Education and Culture and APICCO Community-based Art. The findings are presented in the Greek-language book Learning in Prison, published by Fylatos.

Research findings (in Greek)

The book on the publisher’s website (in Greek)

Watch the discussion on YouTube (in Greek)

Prison education during the pandemic

On 17 October 2020, APICCO Community-based Art organised an online conference on prison education during the COVID-19 pandemic, marking the International Day of Education in Prison.

The first part, on formal education, was moderated by Antigoni Efstratoglou, PhD, Panteion University. The second part, on creative and artistic activities, was moderated by APICCO president Sofia Ioannidi, actor and educational and applied theatre facilitator.

Educators, prison school directors, representatives of justice and human rights institutions, artists, facilitators, students and formerly incarcerated participants discussed the challenges of prison education during the pandemic. Participants included Kalliopi Pasia, Giorgos Dampasis and Panos Dervisis. Second Chance Schools and other education and research organisations were also represented.

Watch the discussion on YouTube (in Greek)

Common Ground Project

May 2020.

Difficult days, days of social isolation imposed by circumstances and by the need to protect health. We went through them, we were still going through them, and we might have to go through them again. We asked friends how they experienced isolation, restriction and social distance. We also thought of people living under compulsory restriction because of a custodial sentence. Isolation concerns the body, the mind, the soul and our emotions. What always remains free is our imagination, and the one thing no one can ever take away is our thoughts and our mind.

A digital collection of testimonies on the experience of confinement during COVID-19.

I Am Here! From the Cell to the Metro

Exhibition of works by incarcerated people (Photography – Painting).

A picture is worth a thousand words, they say — and it is true. Photographs and paintings created by incarcerated people during their time in correctional facilities were presented in public view, in an effort to reach out to and communicate with society. Dreams, fears, thoughts and concerns are expressed through photographs and paintings, reminding us that we are all human, whether lost in the crowd of the Metro or confined inside a cell.

Emotions are shared and universal, and art is the means through which they can be communicated and bring us closer. Syntagma and Kerameikos Metro stations, Friday 29 November 2019 and Saturday 30 November 2019.

Hosted by STASY Metro Stages.

Exhibition locations: Syntagma and Kerameikos, 29–30 November 2019; Monastiraki, 1 December 2019.

Listen to the radio interview

Escape with a Book

Theatre performance ‘Escape with a Book’, presented at Syntagma Square as part of the photography exhibition ‘I Am Here! From the Cell to the Metro’.

… so that it may not be heard …

An artistic collaboration between formerly incarcerated people and correctional officers at the 3rd BioMechanical Festival 2019, ‘Voices of the Unseen’.

APICCO’s Theatre Department presented a collaboration between formerly incarcerated people and correctional officers, creating a work developed through improvisation, devised-theatre tools and texts written by an incarcerated person at Domokos Prison. Correctional officers played incarcerated people and formerly incarcerated people played officers. People from the same environment — prison — but from different positions stepped into one another’s place with honesty, acceptance, reflection, humour and self-irony. In doing so they encountered themselves and appeared before the audience in the light of the stage, in front of the shadow of prejudice that accompanies them. A citizen, in the role of visitor and spectator, becomes the mirror that reflects — and sometimes distorts — our images.

Theatrical Escape from Stereotypes and Prejudice

With the aim of promoting theatre as a means of social awareness, challenging prejudices surrounding both incarcerated offenders and correctional-facility staff, and strengthening an open relationship between the local prison and society, APICCO – Community Based Art, the Domokos Correctional Officers’ Union and the Domokos Second Chance School jointly organised the event ‘Theatrical Escape from Stereotypes and Prejudice’ on Monday 25 June 2018. The event included a theatre performance by the Domokos Second Chance School theatre group inside the correctional facility — Nikolai Gogol’s ‘The Gamblers’, directed by Giorgos Dampasis — and a theatre performance by members of the Domokos Correctional Officers’ Union at the Lamia Municipal Cultural Centre, using texts created by the group and directed by Giorgos Dampasis. Representatives of the correctional system, the local community and the arts also spoke on the subject. The Municipal Regional Theatre of Roumeli supported the event by providing the Cultural Centre and technical staff.

Speakers:

Dimitrios Batzakas – Educator, Director of the 1st Domokos Second Chance School.

Kalliopi Passia – Creative Writing postgraduate, lawyer, member of APICCO Social Cooperative Enterprise.

Stratis Panourios – Actor, director, head of the National Theatre’s Theatre Workshop at Korydallos Prison.

Sofia Ioannidi – Actor, theatre educator, President of APICCO Social Cooperative Enterprise.

Officer…!

A theatre performance by the Domokos Correctional Officers’ Theatre Group, presented as part of the event ‘Escape from Stereotypes and Prejudice’, Domokos – Lamia, 2018.

Text: the group.

Direction: Giorgos Dampasis.

Assistant director: Sofia Ioannidi.

Group facilitation: Panos Dervisis.

Set and costumes: the group.

Music supervision: Alex Dimou.

Performers, in order of appearance: Dimitris Gkantelas, Anastasios Mylonakis, Ioanna Baka, Ioannis Efstathiou, Evangelos Balatsoukas.

Break the Chain

A performance raising awareness of human trafficking, presented as part of the Break the Chain Festival 2016.

The Room.

And then I found myself in this room. There was not enough light. The air was heavy and smelled of damp. The space was almost empty — only the essentials: a mattress on the floor and a small wooden table, so worn that it could barely stand. The walls rose endlessly, grey, shutting people away from the world. Although empty, the room was filled with breaths, screams, anguish, bloodied bodies, desperate pleas, human smells, violence and tears. I still wonder whether I could guess how many bodies had lain on that mattress before me. Tens? Hundreds? Thousands? And how many would lie there after me? Now this room is my cell. Cell, place of detention, prison. Now I am there. Me, you… any one of us. We are all in the room. We all see the room and do not speak of it. We all hear and feel what happens in the room and do not speak of it. Will you find the courage to say it? Please… will you speak?