SNFCC Green Weekend: Sustainable Choices

On Saturday and Sunday, September 23 & 24, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center (SNFCC) is organizing, for the second year in a row, the SNFCC Green Weekend, a two-day event dedicated to the environment, featuring a variety of activities revolving around the central theme of “Sustainable Choices”. 

The program includes: film screening; Natalia Tsoukala’s photography exhibition Landscapes of Energy;  educational workshops; a Marketplace dedicated to the “second life” of clothes; a collective artwork curated by SOTEUR; information kiosks of environmental protection organizations (Boroume, Aegean Rebreath, Cities for Cycling, Fabric Republic, RECUAL, Save Your Hood); a keynote speech by Sunny Dolat, founding member of the NEST collective; and a panel discussion of distinguished speakers, moderated by journalist Katerina Christofilidou, featuring: columnist and environmental activist Mariza Karidi, co-founder and policy analyst of the Green Tank professor Nikos Mantzaris, Eunomia Research & Consulting Head of Southeast Europe Hara Xirou, and chef Dimitris Skarmoutsos. The two-day program will be complemented by a series of musical and other surprises!

Once again offering a platform for discussion, information and exchange of best practices in environmental protection, this year’s SNFCC Green Weekend aims at raising public awareness and actively engaging citizens.  

To this end, we discuss and discover creative ways in which we can make more “sustainable choices” in our daily lives. What are the consequences of the so-called “fast fashion” and how can we avoid them with conscious personal choices? What percentage of food ends up in the trash and how responsible are we on an individual level? How can we contribute to minimizing energy consumption at our homes in just a few simple steps? What are the proposed European waste management practices? How can daily habits help reduce carbon footprint and thus tackle climate change? These are only a few of the questions we will be dealing with during the Green Weekend at the SNFCC.

This year’s theme was inspired by the much-discussed outdoor installation Return to Sender by the African art collective NEST, which has been presented at the SNFCC Esplanade, in collaboration with the National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST), since April 26. The artwork is made of tons of used clothes, demonstrating the actual dimensions of uncontrolled consumption in the Global North, and taking us on a journey through a dystopian landscape of textile waste. Return to Sender will be exhibited at the SNFCC until September 30. 

The SNFCC Green Weekend has free admission, thanks to a grant by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF).