ACCMR: Postcard Workshop on the theme “Our Home”

Refugee Week Festival 2024

Saturday June 1, 2024

11:00 – 13:00

Greek Forum of Refugees

Stournari 57, Athens

The Interculturality and Communities Working Group of the Athens Coordination Center for Migrant and Refugee issues | ACCMR in collaboration with the Refugee Week Festival 2024 and the Greek Forum of Refugees, the Greek Forum of Migrants and the Club of Ukrainian Women in Greece are organizing a workshop on the creation of postcards within the framework of the theme “Our Home”.

On the occasion of this year’s Refugee Week Festival theme, the workshop invites City’s residents with refugee or migrant background and locals to “open the door of their home” and through a personal object or photo, to share their story which is part of ‘Our common Home’. This item will be gifted to the visitors of this year’s Refugee Week Festival…with a postcard!

The workshop will be implemented by Vasileia Vaxevani, partner of the Athens Comics Library.

“The idea of home is very important in traditional fairy tales and myths around the world. Through these we will explore the ways we can tell our own personal stories. We will use improvisational games as well as narrative techniques to structure a real or imaginary story around the object they will bring. If someone doesn’t want or can’t bring it, we can also paint it.”

What you need for the workshop

The participants are invited to bring with them, without it being necessary, an object that means “Home” to them. Even if the object does not exist, we can draw it.

The result of the workshop will be the creation of postcards.

Workshop language: The workshop will be conducted in either English or Greek (depending on the composition of the group), with interpretation in one of the two. Otherwise, interpretation should be provided.

Due to a limited number of participants, priority will be given.

Registration: Pleas fill in the information in the following link until Thursday, 30 May 2024

Registration Link: https://forms.office.com/e/kys3ypBKED

Maximum number of participants in the workshop: 25 persons

Vasileia Vaxevani

Vasileia Vaxevani has been a professional storyteller since 2008. She has done Classical studies in the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. After her studies she came across the art of storytelling and has studied in the Storytelling School of the Centre for the Study of Dissemination of Myths and Folktales. She has also studied the art of storytelling in Maison du Conte under the guidance of Abbi Patrix and Ben Haggarty. She is one third of the storytelling group Talemaidens. Together they perform in schools, libraries, cultural places, museums, theatres, music halls etc. Since 2010 she has been working with Comicdom Press, creating and implementing comics workshops for children, adults and educators. She coordinates and facilitates educational comics workshops at the Athens Comics Library trying to disseminate the art to a wide and broad audience as well as establish its educational value. She is also the only storyteller in Greece that uses the Japanese storytelling technique Kamishibai that combines oral tradition and comics. Believing that telling stories either through oral tradition or through the use of comics is therapeutic, she often volunteers her work to centres hosting immigrants or institutions that care for children that have been temporarily removed from their families. She was the leader of Baytna Hub @ Athens Comics Library for two years, a program focused on early childhood education for refugee children. She has also volunteered telling stories and Greek myths in institutions and schools in townships in South Africa as part of the UNISA Storytelling Festival.

* The International Organization for Migration (IOM) and UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, have been jointly supporting ACCMR on the basis of a trilateral cooperation with the City of Athens.

Invitation (Ukrainian)