Meeting at Holobiont Project office: The Urban Politics and Governance of Social Innovation in Austerity

From left to right: Teemu Takatalo, Joe Painter and Antonis Vradis.

---

We had the pleasure of meeting up with Joe Painter and Antonis Vradis from Durham University, and filmmaker Ross Domoney, who are working on the project The Urban Politics and Governance of Social Innovation in Austerity, and Dean Hewitt from Boutique Athens and Sarri 12, to discuss art and cultural creativity in modern day Athens at our office in Psirri. The research project is a part of Urban Transformations, connected to University of Oxford and the Economic & Social Research Council. 

We discussed issues such as the social impact of art, urban transformations, gentrification, social sustainability, poverty and crisis. Dean Hewitt shared his insights into the transformations of central Athens, and Psirri specifically, and the growth of street art in recent years. The research project looks at Athens, Berlin and Newcastle as case studies and 'aims to identify the roles of alternative finance, grassroots mobilisation and community provisioning in meeting the needs of their citizens as traditional forms of authority are disrupted and competition for public services increases'. Read a full description of the project HERE.

​We will keep in touch with this research project and hope to exchange ideas and research in the near future.