I am a professional cinematographer and film/media education facilitator for kids and young people based primarily in Greece. I am following the democratic education patterns and I am currently working on two adjacent projects.

 

1.The first one is the co-ordination of a group of parents, children and educators with the aim to start a new democratic institution in Athens, which will follow an enlightened pedagogical approach, which is so much needed by our current social status as a country in a state of total crisis. Our response to the new challenges facing our society is to focus on democratic education and on rebuilding trust and solidarity among the members of our society. We believe that the children of today will play a major role for needed changes in the future and their impact on society is going to transform its character to a less selfish one and more productive, cooperational and based on solidarity.

Since the formation of our group in Athens last June, we embarked on various actions to organise events in order to publicise the need for true democratic reforms in our society and particularly the educational system. Our discource is informed by various sources and our research is opening new paths for our attempt to set up a democratic school in Greece.

 

2.The second project is the documentation of this initiative in the form of a video diary which is "written" through the new encounters and the experience accumulated by them and their resolution as they affect our self-reflective approach to the first project.

For these reasons Ι was encouraged to embark on a tour, in order to visit the well estabished democratic education institutions in Europe and report back, as part of the necessary steps for a thorough research into the subject of running a democratic school. In this context we will visit democratic achools together with my daughter (10 y.o) who acts as the presenter in the documentary film (working title:”From Fourfoura to Summerhill”) we are creating. Preliminary filming has already started in Crete and the footage accumulated so far is only one tenth of the required total. We are still in the beginning, but what a great start we had! We plan to embark on our European tour in December 2015.