Adla Shashati is the Director of the Greek Forum of Migrants and founder of Rootes: Migrants Memory Solidarity Collective. She brings extensive experience in migration, migrant communities, social inclusion, and combating racism and discrimination, with a strong track record at both national and European levels.

She has been actively involved in European networks and initiatives advancing migrants’ rights and racial justice, including serving as the Southern Europe representative at the European Network Against Racism (ENAR) in the past and currently as a member of the Steering Committee of Equinox: Racial Justice Initiative.

Adla is also a member of the Sudanese community in Greece and part of the Døcumatism collective. Through this work, she has contributed to the curation and coordination of collaborative artistic and community initiatives with migrant and refugee communities, focusing on strengthening visibility, representation, and meaningful participation.

Anna Járai, a Budapest-based artist and filmmaker, explores embodiment and memory from a feminist critical perspective, creating research- and performance-based, cross-genre works including films, photographs and installations. She draws inspiration from folklore, family history and local history, which she frequently references in ritualistic reinterpretations.

In 2022, she graduated from the Film programme at Falmouth University in the UK, and in 2026, she graduated with an MA in Fine Art from the Hungarian University of Fine Arts. Her work has screened and exhibited internationally, including at Encounters Film Festival, Millennium Film Workshop, and Mayfair Art Weekend. Following group shows at Tér-Kép Gallery and Turbina Cultural Centre, her debut solo exhibition, Habitus, opens this September at Cairo Contemporary in Budapest. In the spring of 2026, she was a fellow of the School of Artivism residency programme in Palermo, where she explored the themes of artistic activism and translocal solidarity. In early July, at the 5th Urban Camp organised by Tranzit, she led a participatory art workshop based on the theories of Silvia Federici, in which participants created experimental animations around the social significance of gossip.

Avtonomi Akadimia is an artistic form of protest for autonomy and open access education. We practice an inter-epistemology of art, philosophy, ecofeminism, and political healing. Founded by Joulia Strauss in 2014, Avtonomi Akadimia has reactivated the idea of open-air education amidst trees, cicadas and birds, at the very same spot it once existed: at the Akadimia Platonos, a unique grove as a common, from where the word academy originates. Plato has taught in this grove. Only here, at the root of the empire we still live in, can we overcome these ancestral errors of organization: the militarized state, the exclusion of art from the society, and the separation between physis and techne. The miracle of the intangible cultural commons, embodied by the Akadimia Platonos is a unique urban architecture that allows us timelessness as well as a continuity of knowledge and its constant change. Avtonomi Akadimia is an experiment that involves our self-transformation as an educational process. We practice the self-care of our collectivity: selves-care. Avtonomi Akadimia participates in the protection of the unique biotope of Akadimia Platonos.

www.avtonomi-akadimia.net

CREATIVE AGENCY
Sustaining Culture & Creativity in the Age of Intelligence

October 7-9 2026
ATHENS, GREECE
bautopia.eu 

BAUTOPIA IS A CULTURE & CREATIVITY FESTIVAL!
Three days of inspiring lectures, talks, discussions, activations, exchanges & performances across diverse venues in Athens!

inspirational keynotes | panels | workshops | case studies | performances | participatory sessions | guided tours | exhibitions | music programs | creative interventions

Under the title CREATIVE AGENCY: Sustaining Culture & Creativity in the Age of Intelligence, we will together explore the notion of sustainability – but not only from the environmental standpoint, but also the sustainability of creative professions in the face of multiple crises, the technological challenges posed by the use of AI in creative processes, and the impermanence that many creative professions are, and will be facing in the period ahead of us.

Through an inspiring and creative program, we urge you to explore the sense of control you feel in your life, your capacity to influence your own thoughts and behavior, and your faith in your ability to handle a wide range of tasks and situations. Definitely a feeling that seems increasingly elusive nowadays, especially for us working in the precarious, somewhat intangible fields such as culture and creativity. 

EA Imagination Coordinator

Billie Dibb coordinates the imagination stream of European Alternatives, overseeing the organisation’s artistic and cultural projects. They hold an academic background in International Politics, with a focus on gendered nationalism and big data.

Co-organised by the Department of Social Anthropology at Panteion University and the Institute of Informatics & Telecommunications at NCSR Demokritos, the Digital Commons Conference brings social inquiry and technical practice into dialogue. It asks how digital infrastructures can be designed and governed as commons, and how they might support collective autonomy. Its Organising Committee comprises Lida Arnellou, Anna Gradou and Foteini Salmouka (NCSR Demokritos); Eleni Mavroeidi, Diana Riboli and Paraskevi (Voula) Zotali (Panteion); and Natalia Botonaki (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid).

Eteron – Institute for Research and Social Change is a non-profit organisation, based in Athens, Greece, that produces knowledge, contributes towards citizen empowerment and promotes partnerships.

We strive to strengthen arguments, ideas, people and organisations, in order to reach a society, in which the actual needs of the people will be at the center of the public debate.

A step towards a world where the happiness and prosperity of all has equal value.

info@eteron.org
https://eteron.org/en/

ETERON is the festival’s main partner.

European Creative Hubs Network (ECHN) is a peer‑led network of more than 300 hubs across Europe, and 100+ active members. Its mission is to enhance the creative, economic and social impact of creative hubs in Europe and the neighbouring countries. As focal points for creative professionals and businesses, creative hubs offer the most effective way to support the growth and development of cultural and creative industries and sectors.

ECHN nurtures a series of initiatives dedicated to hubs, the wider ecosystem, the creative industry, and the affiliated sectors as a whole. By affiliating with us, creative hubs access mobility programs, annual meetups, learning opportunities, networking activities and advocacy initiatives. Since 2022, ECHN has been selected and has proudly joined the Creative Europe Networks. With the support of this program, ECHN contributes to the reinforcement of the CCSI’s capacity to operate transnationally and internationally, connecting professionals, disseminating ideas and advocating on key sectoral issues.

ECHN is also active in a number of EU‑ funded projects with numerous European partners, covering programs such as Creative Europe, Horizon Europe, Erasmus+, Creative KIC and others. ECHN also advocates for more acknowledgment and visibility of creative hubs within the panorama of European policy‑making, by presenting good practices, highlighting the importance of Creative Hub ecosystems and their contribution to inclusion, the green transition and skills development.

info@creativehubs.net
creativehubs.net
Instagram/Linkedin/Facebook: @creativehubsnet

Giun Trym (he/him) is a speculative social designer and a human rights defender. His work spans from micro-, meso-, to macro-politics as he founded a youth-led organization in the Czech Republic to organize parties for social transformation, while writing human rights violation reports to the UN Human Rights Council. During his free time, Giun also runs a meme page (or the meme page runs him?). As the nature of his work harmonizes between politics, culture, and design, Giun utilizes his background to put abstract theories into real-world politics and diplomacy.

World Bridge Initiatives (WBI)
giuntrym.teamx@gmail.com

Founded in Athens in September 2002, the Greek Forum of Migrants (GFM) is the largest network of migrant communities and organizations in Greece. Operating as an umbrella union association, the GFM brings together over 40  migrant associations. Its core mission is to defend the human rights of migrants and refugees while actively promoting their full civic, social, and economic inclusion into Greek society.

EA Assembly and Deliberation Manager

Irene Alonso Toucido is the Assembly and Deliberation Manager at European Alternatives, where she explores how we live, decide, and care together through democratic experimentation. With roots in sociology and a strong interest in the commons, ecofeminism, and community practices, her work seeks to reimagine participation, not only as a right, but as a shared practice of shaping and sustaining life in common.

Jon trained as an architect, and currently is a researcher, practitioner and educator at the RCA, the University of Westminster (MSc Advanced Environmental Design), and the Bartlett (MArch).

In relation to Climate Justice research and the Environmental Architecture programme at the RCA, his recent work and publications have focused on the need for an dialogical re-conception of design, planning and strategy in relation to the emerging demands for global and local Green New Deals, while his co-authored 2014 book The Design of Scarcity has recently been translated into German (2018) and Greek (2020).

Work based in material from the Bateson archive, together with various dialogic and pedagogic experiments, is moving towards a book entitled The Ecological Calculus, while a series of environmental architecture field projects are underway in Greece, in particular around evaporative cooling and pollution in Athens.

EA Board Member

Louna Sbou (she/they) is a cultural entrepreneur, changemaker and community-builder, educated in Law and Cultural Entrepreneurship in Germany and the UK. As a queer Amazigh Muslim, her lived experiences shape a non-Western approach to collective-making, research and resilient leadership.

Lydia is a journalist and audio producer based between Greece and the US. Her work has appeared in news outlets such as The New York Times, NPR, BBC, Al Jazeera and more. She has specifically investigated the topic of border regimes and new technologies. She is currently serving as co-editor-in-chief at the Greek investigative outlet Solomon. 

EA Communications Director

Marta Cillero is Managing Director at Fondazione Studio Rizoma (Palermo) and Communications Manager at European Alternatives. She holds degrees in Media Studies, Journalism and Communication (Madrid, Istanbul, and Chicago) and a master’s in Gender Studies (Rome). Her research and writing focus on gender violence in Mediterranean countries.

Martin Simpson is an artist/technologist currently based in Vienna. His practice centres on place-based music, building environmentally-engaged instruments that sonify their environmental dependencies. As part of TAAT arts collective, he co-creates participatory installations for interspecies encounters, and develops Live Agora, an open-source tool for artistic commoning which received the 2024 European Social Innovation Award for Digital Democracy. He holds degrees from Köln International School of Design (2020) and the Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics Graz (2025).

http://situ.am
http://taat.live

Producer and Change-Maker, working creatively and innovatively for the inclusion of marginalised communities.

EA Director

Niccolò Milanese is a poet and one of the founding directors of European Alternatives. He fosters the development of the organisation, its staff and the ecosystem around European Alternatives and is the focal point for the ‘learn’ stream of our work.

EA Communications Officer

Noemi Pittalà is a multidisciplinary artivist and cultural professional from Palermo, working at the intersection of art and social inclusion. With a background in visual arts and theatre, she has specialised in communications within the cultural sector, with a focus on community engagement, radical inclusion, and active youth participation.

Onur Akgül, a climate activist and researcher, has been working in various branches of climate, environmental, and rights areas as activist, NGO expert, and researcher for about 15 years. A volunteer of the Northern Forests Defense (Kuzey Ormanları Savunması) in Istanbul, Akgül is involved in the climate crisis and climate justice politics, grassroots movements as part of urban and environmental resistance, bicycle activism, ecological, and animal rights movements in Turkey. He has been a volunteer and activist for the Northern Forests Defense since its establishment in 2013 and is actively engaged with local movements, community organizing, and grassroots politics for ecological preservation, wildlife protection, urban resilience, coal phase-out, just transition, and climate justice. He worked with Greenpeace as a Climate and Energy Campaigner for 5 years and also worked with other prominent environmental and climate NGOs in Turkey, such as 350.org and TEMA Foundation. Writing regularly on the local and global environmental crisis and climate politics, Akgül recently co-authored (with Mine Yıldırım) a chapter on deforestation, industrial agriculture, and wildlife destruction in the age of zoonotic diseases in the book titled *Pandemic: Rethinking the World in the Age of Extinction* (Tellekt, 2020). Akgül also authored an article on just transition and its function in global and national climate policy in the book titled *Ecology: The Future of Coexistence* (Tellekt, 2022). Based in Istanbul, Akgül currently works as a Climate Change Researcher and Just Transition Lead at the Istanbul Policy Center, Sabancı University, sharing his research as academic reports with the public and relevant stakeholders.

EA Deputy Director

Ophélie coordinates the programmes that aim at developing and implementing sustainable tools of participative democracy such as citizens assemblies and ECIs. She also co-coordinates the Citizens Take Over Europe coalition.

Paremvasi 2030 is a non-formal network of youth organizations and activists that believe in creating open, progressive, participatory spaces of action. The word «Paremvasi» stands for «Intervention», while 2030 is a call to action to the present, while keeping the horizon to the future. 

The first project of the initiative is the Participatory Magazine, a collective space of ideas and proposals, created in cooperation with Inter Alia and with the support of Eteron Institute.

EA Administrative Officer

Ruxandra Stan is a Romanian citizen who relocated to Paris in 2015. She holds a degree in Computer Science as well as a Master’s in Commercial Business Law. Her professional career in finance includes experience within banking institutions and government organizations, where she has developed strong expertise in financial operations and regulatory compliance.

EA Director

Ségolène Pruvot is Director of European Alternatives. Holding a doctorate in Urban Sociology, her work sits at the intersection of arts, the city, and social change. She trained as a political scientist and urban planner in France, the UK, and Germany.

Yasmine Amal is a self-taught artist based between Morocco and Berlin. Her work explores kinship, feminity and spiritual interconnectedness within an elemental and metaphysical space, unfolding through bold colours and rhythmic patterns.

Before pursuing a career in art in 2023, she worked in international relations with a focus on violent extremism and social cohesion. She is committed to fostering dialogue and social transformation through her artistic and professional practice.

As an Indigenous futurist, she interweaves sufi thought with collectivist and ecological narratives to create gateways beyond the anthropocene. Her intuition-based approach channels sensuality and ancestral knowledge, inviting viewers into a playground for imagination. She approaches painting as a way to hold complexity, seeking to reconcile spirituality and logic, ego and soul within the different dimensions of colour and texture.

Her symbolism is shaped by her Amazigh heritage and a deep connection to nature. Especially the ocean guides her artistic journey as both inspiration and metaphor.

Since starting to work as an artist in 2023, her works have been featured in group exhibitions at venues such as Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, Artorium, and Mordan Art Gallery in Casablanca. She is a finalist for the Prix Mustaqbal, an award recognizing emerging artistic talents in Morocco. She currently holds her first solo show at Gallery Grolman in Berlin. Alongside her practice she holds creative workshops, cultivating spaces for cross-cultural dialogue and resilience.