Get ready for the first Meet Market of 2022!

We will be kicking of the spring season with our classic Easter edition Meet Market at Technopolis, City of Athens. Expect to find 120 plus stands of locally produced wonders from makers all over Greece – both inside our classic D12 venue and outside in the central courtyard and Mixanourgio courtyard of Technopolis. And they’ll be plenty of new participants too!

As usual, we’ll have dj sets, interactive games for kids, street food, cocktails, our classic Easter egg hunt and general good vibes, so spend the day with us. Its been a while and we can’t wait to meet again.

Plenty more info coming soon!

The zeibekiko dance and the popular musical instruments bouzouki, tzouras, and baglamas have been included on Greece’s National Intangible Cultural Heritage List, the Greek Culture Ministry recently announced.

“The zeibekiko dance, the bouzouki, and similar musical instruments identify with Greece and its folk tradition. They played a leading role in Greek folk music during the 20th century,” Culture Minister Lina Mendoni said.

According to Mendoni, the bouzouki, tzouras, and baglamas are the most renowned Greek musical instruments abroad.

The zeibekiko dance

The zeibekiko was developed in large urban centers of Greece, mainly port cities including Piraeus, Patra, Syros, Thessaloniki, Volos, Chania, and Kavala among others, and the eastern Aegean islands.

The bouzouki instrument

The bouzouki was brought to Greece in the early 1900s by Greek refugees from Anatolia and quickly became the central instrument to the rebetiko genre and its music branches. It is now an important element of modern laïko pop Greek music.

The tzouras and baglamas instruments

Also added to Greece’s National Intangible Cultural Heritage List are the tzouras and baglamas. The two musical instruments are both connected to Greece’s folk tradition and associated with the zeibekiko dance.

The tzouras is related to the bouzouki. It is made in six-string and eight-string varieties.

The baglamas is a smaller version of the bouzouki pitched an octave higher, with unison pairs on the four highest strings and an octave pair on the lower D. Musically, the baglamas is most often found supporting the bouzouki in the Piraeus city style of rebetiko.

To read this article in full, please visit: news.gtp.gr

Greek universities plan to expand the number of programs offered in English, aiming to attract students from the Balkans, other Mediterranean countries, South Asia, and China, as well as interested Greek students.

More than 200 undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral programs will be added, most in 2023-24 but some in the 2022-23 academic year.

Universities are seeking support from EU structural funds.

Likewise, UK universities aim to attract Greek students back, after seeing an exodus after Brexit, by offering joint programs with Greek institutions.

Originally published on: ekathimerini.com

The The Hub for the Exchange of Music Innovation is proud to announce the launch of HEMI Incubator, the first music business incubation & acceleration programme in the region!

Do you run your own Music Business?

Are you developing a groundbreaking idea addressing the needs of the Music Industry.
Looking for coaching, networking and business development opportunities? 

Choose one of our programmes, apply (deadline 10/04), join our community, and take your chance to shape the future of the Music Industry, with us! 

FokiaNou Art Space is pleased to present a two-person exhibition with Ioanna Terlidou and Piyi Wong, artists who work in vastly different media but with a common delicate, light-weight approach, evoking ephemerality. Terlidou’s work in fabric, embroidery, crochet and weaving, injects transparency and a play of light, which reveals different aspects of the fabric at different moments; fleeting glimpses of human figures recall shadow theater. Likewise, Wong’s photographic botany portraiture has a direct and immediate quality in capturing fragments of time, expressing the transitory, momentary concept of ephemerality, inspired by Lao Zi’s philosophical concept of Ziran.

Ioanna Terlidou, originally from Thessaloniki, studied tapestry and drawing at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts, on a scholarship from EOMMEX (Hellenic Organization of Small and Medium Sized Enterprises and Handicraft). Upon returning to Greece, she set up her studio in Pilion, where she initially worked with a traditional (seated) floor loom. She later moved to a vertical loom, which helped her develop a more personal artistic style. Terlidou has shown her work at E-Mi Gallery, Volos; Gallery 7, Athens; the Folkloric Museum of Larissa and the Archaelogical Museum, Volos, among others. ioannaterlido@yahoo.gr

Piyi Wong is a multidisciplinary artist/designer from a Chinese/Malaysian background. She earned her degree in Graphics and Media and graduated with Honours from the London College of Printing, part of the collegiate University of the Arts London. She has resided and worked in Greece for the last ten years, attending for 3 years the Athens School of Fine Arts as a visiting artist in the Graphics Lab (letterpress and book making) and the Photography Lab. She also worked as art director at the award winning Leo Burnet Kuala Lumpur and collaborated with the artist/photographer Justin Brice Guariglia. http://www.poieinpiyi.com

FokiaNou Art Space is an artist-run project space in the intimacy of a small apartment in an old building in the center of Athens. The space encourages collaborative creative efforts between Greek and foreign artists, thereby promoting and supporting the local art community. The space hosts exhibitions, workshops and projects under the direction of two artists, Mary Cox and Panagiotis Voulgaris. www.fokianou247.gr

Opening:  Thursday 31 March, 17.00
Duration:   31 March – 16 April, 2022
Hours:  Thursday – Saturday 17.00-20.00
FokiaNou Art Space, Fokianou 24, 7^th Floor, Pagrati  Metro:  Evangelismos

Following last February's galactic event "A Night At The Museum",  the team of the Industrial Gas Museum will be holding two additional events for our little friends to solve the unsolved mysteries of the universe. 

The Industrial Gas Museum welcomes children of ages 5-7  & 8-11 years old on Friday 1st & Saturday 2nd of April to an exciting series of family activities at the Old Gas Factory which gave light and energy to the city of Athens for 130 years. 


For Families With Children 5-7 Years Old

When: Friday, April 1st 2022
Time: 17:30-21: 30
Meeting point: INNOVATHENS Building

For Families With Children 8-11 Years Old

When: Saturday, April 2nd 2022
Time: 17:00 - 22:00
Meeting point: INNOVATHENS Building

Information-reservations: 213-0109325 (Mon-Fri. 11: 00-16.00)
Places are limited. Phone reservation required.

Greece is one of the most friendly countries in Europe, according to a recent report by InterNations.

Thousands of expatriates took a survey for InterNations, a site that offers essential tips to expats around the world, to help determine which countries in Europe and around the world are the most friendly. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Greece, a country known for its extroverted people, ranked among the top ten in Europe.

Greece among top ten most friendly countries in Europe

Greece was voted the eighth friendliest European country, while Portugal topped the list. Greece was also ranked twelfth on the list of best countries in Europe for making friends.

Taiwan topped the international list of friendliest countries, and Mexico ranked first for making new friends.

The least friendly country on the survey was Austria, and the countries least conducive to making friends were Sweden, Denmark, and Norway.

Greece’s friendly reputation amongst expats and tourists likely stems from the longstanding Greek value of hospitality, or “philoxenia.” Philoxenia, which literally means “friend of a stranger” in Ancient Greek, is an ancient concept that is still very prominent in modern Greece.

In fact, Greek god Zeus is also known as “Zeus Xenios” because he was also the protector of strangers and travelers. He thus embodied the ancient Greek religious obligation to be hospitable to travelers.

To read this article in full, please visit: greekreporter.com

Visiting folk museums that present how houses and other spaces were set up in the past can be a fascinating experience, but during one’s visit, it’s hard to forget one is in a museum.

One of the key charms of the Katakouzenos House Museum (KHM) is that it almost feels still lived in. The 300m sq apartment on Vas. Amalias Ave is filled with impressive and highly elegant furnishings, books, and paintings by the likes of Chagall, who was one of the illustrious and globally famous friends of the owners. It is a cultural gem on the 4th floor looking out to the Parliament Building that still, not enough people know about.

The KHM was once the private residence of acclaimed psychiatrist Angelos Katakouzenos and his intellectually pioneering wife Leto, who belonged to the cultural elite of Europe’s so-called “1930s generation,” and were cultural ambassadors of Greece abroad and arbiters of international tendencies in Greece.

When she was a young woman, the museum’s director Sophia Peloponnisiou, connected with Leto Katakouzenou during the last decades of her life.

They developed a close and loyal friendship during which Peloponissiou made her dedication to her friend’s cultural visions a priority, offering her time and efforts in helping her publish her autobiography, soon published in its fifth version, and helping to organize cultural initiatives. Following Leto Katakouzenos’s death, the young woman discovered that she had been assigned the honor of continuing the pair’s cultural vision by keeping the apartment and its legacy ‘alive’.

Hosting a year-round series of cultural events such as talks, music and theatre performances, readings, and screenings, the KHM contains an extensive collection of over 40 paintings, some drawings, and prints, numerous works of art (decorative objects, sculptures), paintings in various media from the 1930s-1970s and a quality collection of 18th and 19th C. French and Hellenic furniture. The series of paintings includes a set of four large mahogany doors especially painted for the Katakouzenoi by their close friend Nikos Chatzekyriakos-Gkikas and many more paintings by the same artist in various media.

Further works by Spyros Vasileiou, Giannis Tsarouches, Giorgos Gounaropoulos (all prominent artists of the “1930s generation”) are hung all over the house. The watercolor and pastel portrait of Leto by Marc Chagall is perhaps the best work of art by a non-Hellene artist. “What makes the KHM collection of paintings quite unique, apart from their undoubted artistic and monetary value, is the way they were acquisitioned” notes Peloponissiou. “None of the works was purchased; indeed most were given by the artists themselves as gifts, tokens of friendship or gratitude.”

To read this article in full, please visit: greekcitytimes.com