Athens
Alon and Melissa recap on their time visiting, taking part in and facilitating spaces for learning in the Greek capital.
On our drive north from Athens we read the Guardian long-read ‘Five myths about the refugee crisis’, based on journalist Daniel Trilling’s five years of reporting on refugees in Europe. The article emphasised much of what we have experienced, significantly that the European policies that have been actively attempting to stem the flow of unwanted migration into Europe rather than invest in sustainable solutions have, in turn, created worse problems for all. In light of this, our trip has become focussed on instances of resistance as we try to understand what ‘ordinary’ people are doing when government policies fail. Alternatives created by individuals and groups that are, by their very nature, radical; grassroots movements and spaces that are, as the BBC Radio 4 episode ‘Greece’s Haven Hotel’ defines, a ‘utopian experiment that can only exist in the cracks of a broken system.’
In Athens we’ve visited, taken part in and facilitated a broad range of these spaces, including activity days for children and parents in the park; trips to one of Athens’ many beaches; urban gardening on balconies; cooking for 800 people in a co-operative kitchens; weekly film-screenings; food distributions in squats and on the streets; language classes; making spice kits with young people; crocheting with young men; CV workshops and much, much more. Though these are all decisively non-revolutionary activities, the circumstances in which they arise make them radical. Within this broken system, we’ve seen that offering normality is itself essential.
The learning from these spaces offers possibility, hope and a future that is otherwise inconceivable. We saw this when spending the day with Helga, a woman who, every weekend, runs a full day of activities for children (and sometimes their parents) who live in and around Athens in camps, squats or apartments. We drove to a beautiful park in a residential area of Athens and together we prepared sandwiches for each other, spent time making flowers out of clay, made a huge fruit salad with fresh fruit from a local market and importantly, ran and played freely, making noise and having fun. The activities focus on creating with the hands, connecting the hands and the eyes so that the body and the mind can get into the same rhythm. For most of the people Helga works with, the experience of seeking asylum has left significant traumas. As children, these formative years are being shaped by negative experiences as they grow up displaced. What she is trying to do is provide moments of joy so that when looking back, these young people will also have moments to smile about.
We visited another project in the city that provides a safe and comfortable space for vulnerable young people. They run workshops, provide lunch and do outreach, but most importantly they provide a physical space for these young people to be at ease, where they can, as the volunteers told us, “just be young people again.” When we asked the people who run the space how they know if they’ve been successful, they answered, “You see the muscles of the face change.”
Something we often hear when speaking to volunteers and staff is their desire, and inability, to do more. One told us that she feels like she is constantly fixing leaks, but just as she’s fixed one another appears. These individuals and small organisations don’t have the power of governments to grant asylum, or to provide shelter and food for everyone, but what they can and are doing is producing spaces that empower people, give them hope and allow them to imagine a future. Even if this is simply knowing that tomorrow we will learn something new or tomorrow you will be needed here, having purpose is vital to our wellbeing and feelings of self-worth.
We’ve seen in Athens the innovative ways spaces are created and maintained, and learnt what they do to include and invite people, and the role of non-formal educational spaces in meeting social, educational, cultural and emotional needs ignored elsewhere.
What the hard work of these individuals and groups proves is that, if they can do so much with such minimal resources, then there is room for us all to be doing more, including those in power. As one activist in the aforementioned BBC Radio 4 interview says, “If we can run one of the best housing projects for refugees without any official resources, state money, NGO help, without specialists… then the fact that [governments] are not doing it is a political choice, it’s not that you cannot do it, it’s that you don’t want to do it.”
