Theo Prodromidis was awarded the 2020 AFIELD mentorship for his initiative Laying down law at the Open School for Immigrants of Piraeus in Athens, Greece.

“Laying down law” explores the participation and the creative use of law through the community of the Open School for Immigrants of Piraeus and an attempt to explore the opening up of a space for collaboration between lawyers and students and volunteers of the school and ways to share it with the rest of its connected communities from more than 40 national backgrounds. ¹

The initiative proposes to produce and disseminate widely a series of videos based on the use of improvisation and performance techniques on how to deal with legal processes. Their focus expands beyond the locality of the school, a neighbourhood of historical and contemporary migrant populations at the port of Piraeus, to those willing to come to Europe. Through the sharing and ease of accessing legal advice, this creative process could lead to a redefinition of citizenship by participation and broadening the current understanding of conditions related to migratory processes and solidarity initiatives in education. ²

Throughout this 18 month mentorship, Theo seeks to expand the discussions through a wider network, circulate the call to participation and exchange through other initiatives engaging with migrant populations and radical pedagogy globally. ³ He will work with 2018 AFIELD Mentee Giuseppe Miciarelli, who has personal experience of the school and its processes, in creatively approaching the main bureaucratic/legal concerns and demands of the proposed project.

Theo Prodromidis (Athens, 1979) is a visual artist and film director. He holds a degree in Contemporary Media Practice and an MFA in Fine Art by Goldsmiths. He is a 2019-20 ARTWORKS Fellows and a 2020-21 co-leader of a project at Victoria Square Project in Athens, supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Public Humanities Initiative at Columbia University. He is a member of the Institute of Radical Imagination and assembly member of Solidarity Schools Network, where he is exploring participatory models of cultural production within an informal educational structure. Prodromidis has been developing non formal activities at the Open School for Immigrants of Piraeus, where he is a volunteer, on dialectical practices in public sphere and autonomous paideia towards reclaiming citizenship.

For more information, visit the Open School for Migrant’s website and follow Theo’s updates on Facebook and Instagram.