AKTES (Pocket Academy for Arts) is a socio-cultural project designed for small insular areas in order to support the participation of children in community life and development.
In 2021-22 AKTES travelled to Serifos island, Cyclades, Aegean sea and the strategic area of development was recycling and protection of the environment.
Each year AKTES project travels to a different island and invites 1-4 different artists for a series of short residencies during winter months. The goal is to use artistic experimentation as a tool in order for the children to collaborate with the artist and co-create an artistic work that is related to a strategic area of development of each island (for example tourism, culture, environment, etc).
The Municipality of Serifos worked together with AKTES team around the thematic of this year (environmental protection & recycling) and decided to invite the children to contribute with their thoughts and imagination in the environmental campaign that starts on the island in spring 2022. The Municipality wants to inform and engage the local community and summer tourists to recycle as they are launching a "blue bin" program in March 2022.
2021-22 artistic residency:
AKTES collaborated with Onassis AiR of Onassis Foundation on the artistic curation of this year's round. After some brainstorming on the needs of the children and this year's thematic we invited Latent Community (Sotiris Tsigganos, Jonian Bisai) to participate in this year's artistic residency. Latent Community is a participant of The School of Infinite Rehearsals of Onassis AiR 2020-21.
The artistic residency of Latent Community engaged the children of Serifos (ages 10-17) in a co-creating process of a video. Through a series of participatory games, the children mapped their favourite beaches of the island, they reflected on what they want to protect them from, how they will protect them and why they need to protect them. The children, with the support of the artists, created a script and recorded their voices reading it. They decided on a title and how they will share the final video with their community and the summer visitors/tourists.
The artists curated the shooting and the voice-over of the final video.
When: 1-10 February 2022
Local Collaborations:
The project is implemented by the non-profit organization COMM’ON in collaboration with the Municipality of Serifos and Onassis AiR.
Funder by: Ministry of Culture
With the support of Onassis AiR and Zante Ferries
Under the auspices: Ministry of Culture | Ministry of Tourism
With the help of: Isalos Cafe Serifos
AKTES project was designed in 2019 by COMM'ON and Cultópia