Petra Tilos kicked off in November 2023 in Tilos island and aims to mobilize and educate the community of Tilos on the history, the environmental impact, the restoration and possible reuse of dry stone constructions found on the island.
Engaging the local community:
Petra Tilos is a collective initiative of a small group of people who want to engage and activate their community to collectivly learn and research the history of the dry stones constructions of Tilos Island and together to co-create, co-design and co-develop the next steps of the project!
The project's first phase will evolve from November 2023 till March 2024 and aims to develop 3 main activities:
Research and record oral history narrations from 3 generations of Tilos residents that work or have worked with stone techniques.
Design and implement a 11 day workshop "Tilos School of Dry Stone" where local participants will learn restoration techniques and restore part of an old path.
Create a digital platform to present all found material and collective processes.
COMM'ON is collaborating with Petra Tilos team to co-design the community engament process and to support all participatory and collective processes along the way.
Our collaboration came as a next step to the work that we did in Tilos in 2023 with AKTES project. We are honored and excited to work in Tilos again and support the locals develop their own ideas, projects and programs.
What happened in Tilos:
For 3 months (January - March 2024) Petra Tilos team opened up the space for community bonding, collective desicion making and for co-design of a 10 day "fest" for the "Dry Stone School" that took place 29 March to 07 April 2024 in Tilos.
We developed a community engagement process that included weekly open meetings, open discussions, talks, screanings and a lot more..!
What we achived:
Open a space for community meetings and community work "Petra House" with the support of Tilos Municipality.
We co-desinged the program and activities of DryStone School with 30 members of the local comunity (5 teams were created to work on the content of 5 different events during the drystone school).
We developed 5 mini documentaries (18-30 min) on dry stone building, environmental changes and community structurew in Tilos with oral history inteviews (you can watch the episodes in Petra's you tube channel) with the support of Nefeli Papaioannou (cinematographer).
We implemented around 12 open community meetings, an open community discussion (on the goals of the project), 2 mini doc screenings for the community and a 11 days Dry Stone School that included: 3 talks on environmental development, on drystone archaological findings and a presentation of another drystone team from Amorgos (Cyclades), a series of games related to stoned for kids, 4 days of building lessons and drystone restoration in the Potamos-Micro Chorio path).
We created a website for the archiving of our process, social media presence and a youtube channel.
More than 70 people participated in the meetings, events and the school!
When: November 2013 - March 2024
Where: Tilos Island
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"Petra Tilos" is an initiative of a small group of people that want to engage and activate their community to collectivly learn and research the history of the dry stones constructions of Tilos Island.
The project is developed by a team of locals, with the suppost of AC Tilos, Blue Star Ferries and the Municipality of Tilos, in cooparation with COMM'ON and Tilos Youth Group (Enosi Neon Tilou).
The project is funded by Athina I. Martinou Foundation under Points Of Support programe, with the participation of 10 charitable organizations.