Reimagining Arts, Ethics, and Democracy – 2027

Overview

Athens, Greece, long synonymous with democracy, has faced myriad crises over the past 15 years, challenging its democratic principles. Over this same time period, Athens has evolved into a hub for artists and activists, redefining itself as a hotbed for urgent, socially conscious artistic movements.

DukeEngage Athens invites a group of Duke undergraduates to work closely with four of Athens’ most dynamic NGOs, each doing important work in areas of urgent need. WHEN Hub focuses on women’s empowerment; Shedia is a magazine and creative hub for the city’s homeless population; Velos provides a safe space for unaccompanied refugees (ages 16-30); and Margarita is an experimental school and training center for adults with disabilities.

These site placements (4 days per week) will be complemented by work (1 day per week) on Theater, the latest participatory social art project by choreographer and Duke professor Michael Kliën. Theater, a three-day event involving hundreds of people from across the city, will give undergraduates the opportunity to have a hands-on role in realizing a significant international arts project in the heart of Athens. Students will play a key role in braiding together social change and artistic practice in one of Europe’s most politically-engaged cities.

These experiences will develop and strengthen Duke students’ abilities to:

• analyze and address complicated social, political, and ethical issues through movement, dialogue, community engagement, and art-making
• connect knowledge from the DukeEngage experience to their area of study, using it to reimagine rigid theories and challenge obsolete frameworks of social conditioning

Community Partnerships

Participants will be involved almost full-time (4 days a week) with their respective host organizations. Two students will be placed at each organization. Each NGO is small and their needs change dynamically. Broadly speaking, however, students can expect the following emphases:

• WHEN – research, entrepreneurship, women’s issues
• Shedia – journalistic writing, hands-on artistic practice, housing and social justice
• Velos – research, psychology, refugee and youth justice
• Margarita – education, hands-on artistic pedagogy, disability justice

Students will be asked to explicitly rank their preferred organization during the application and interview process. Best efforts will be made to match each student with their top choices, though we also believe strongly in each organization’s work and feel confident that every student would have a meaningful experience at any of the four organizations.

Additionally, one day a week will be spent by the whole group—undergraduates and on-site staff—working together on the production of Theater. This will involve weekly meetings with Michael, the site coordinator, and other artists in Athens to familiarize students with social choreographic practices and further their personal creative development. These meetings will also offer further contextualization regarding present-day Athens, helping students better understand the city and its communities. Over the program’s final month, students will participate in the execution of the three-day Theater production, which will take place during the final two weeks of the program. Students will thus have the rare opportunity to learn what happens behind the scenes to sustain a full-scale arts project in the heart of a major city.

 

Requirements

Language: Knowledge of modern Greek is not expected but would be beneficial. Students will take intensive introductory Greek lessons four days a week during the first month in order to afford them basic language skills to aid in their engagement with the city.

Coursework: All majors or academic backgrounds are welcome.

Skills: No specific skills are required, but previous experience with creative production of any kind is beneficial. Still, those with little arts background, but a passion for democracy, experiments ,and critical thinking are encouraged to apply!

Personal Qualities: Flexible, outgoing, enjoys working with others, willing to take initiative, comfortable with unstructured time and creative risk-taking. An ability to make something–anything–rather than break something down will be valued. When something is truly “creative,” it envisions an alternative and conjures an image of how things might be!

This program is designed as an immersive experience for Duke students to learn from and with creative practitioners and a city’s diverse communities. The site-placements and artistic production are two interconnected, living, unfolding processes—students should not expect a rigidly pre-planned schedule, but should be prepared to adapt to the circumstances and develop their own meaningful forms of engagement with their host organizations and the citizens of Athens.

 

Logistics

Housing, meals, and transportation: Participants will be housed in one apartment building in the center of Athens, spread across three units. These will be fully equipped with kitchens, bathrooms, etc. Students will be provided with a stipend for groceries and are responsible for preparing their own meals. Scheduled program activities will utilize public transportation wherever feasible. Public transportation in Athens is extensive and widely used by residents and tourists alike. It will be used by program participants to travel to and from the site placements as well as most group activities.

Local safety, security, and cultural norms: We encourage students who have questions or concerns about health or safety in international programs to check Duke’s International SOS (ISOS) portal for relevant information. If you have special needs related to health, culture, disability, or religious practices, please contact the program director(s) or the DukeEngage office to discuss whether your needs can be accommodated in this program.

For guidance on how race, religion, sexual/gender identity, ability, or other aspects of identity might impact your travels, we suggest exploring the Diversity, Identity and Global Travel section of the DukeEngage website.

 

Academic Connections

This program is open to all and might especially appeal to students taking courses in Cultural Anthropology, Education, English, History, International and Comparative Studies, the Performing Arts, Political Science, Psychology, Visual Media Studies. Students who participate in this program might go on to pursue the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Certificate, a Bass Connections and/or Story+ project, a Benenson Awards in the Arts, and/or a Thesis/Independent Research Project.