The programme.

Who Counts in the Demos?

In ancient Greek, demos meant the people: the body of citizens who governed the city. The word is still in daily use in Greece, but it now means something narrower. Your dimos is your municipality, the local authority whose mayor you elect and whose streets you live on. The same word names the people who rule and the council you live under, and the two are no longer the same set of people. Across Europe, millions of adults live on the wrong side of that gap. More than four million people in the United Kingdom work, pay tax and raise children in a country whose elections they cannot vote in. In Greece, EU citizens resident here can vote in municipal elections while everyone else cannot: a law granting that right to long-term residents from outside the EU was passed in 2010 and struck down as unconstitutional by the country's highest administrative court in 2013. A man who has lived twenty years in Kypseli, one of the densest and most migrant neighbourhoods in central Athens, still has no say in who runs it. Lara Parizotto is from Brazil, has spent twelve years in Britain, and has spent most of them campaigning for one idea: that everyone who lives in a country should vote in it. She co-founded the Migrant Democracy Project and got herself elected as a London councillor while making the argument. She is this year's Athens Democracy Forum laureate. A conversation about what changes when the people who live somewhere can finally remove the people who govern them, and about how differently citizenship, residence and nationality read depending on where you are standing when you say them.

Opening remarks

First song — the isokratisses

A cappella from their seats, then moving to the stage.

Introducing the panigyri

A short talk on the panigyri as the mechanism by which a community assembles itself — and the introduction to the conversation that follows.

Nobody Grieves Anymore

Main Hall, Ωδείο Αθηνών / Athens Conservatoire

Epirus is the mountainous northwest corner of Greece, along the Albanian border. It is one of the poorest and emptiest regions in Europe, hollowed out by a century of people leaving for Athens, Germany, Australia and America. What survived there is a form of singing found almost nowhere else: polyphonic song, no instruments, performed only by a group. One voice carries the melody, a second turns it, and the rest hold a single unbroken note underneath called the ison, the drone that makes the song possible. Many of these songs are moirologia, laments, and many of the laments are about xenitia, the condition of being far from home.

Citizens at Work: Από την Κοινωνία στη Βουλή.

Demos auditorium (2nd floor)

Limited to 50 places — book in the app

The Diagnosis: How We Become Strangers

Demos Plateia, Ipitou 17

What does it mean to live among other people and still feel alone? Actor and director Konstantinos Bibis and photographer Michael Pappas join journalist Konstantinos Vrettos for a conversation about loneliness as both a personal experience and a social condition. Moving from the theatre stage to images of communities and collective rituals, they explore how art reveals the forces that estrange us from one another, while also creating spaces for recognition, connection and togetherness.

Culture, Identity and Belonging in a Changing City

Demos Plateia

The manosphere is one of the most visible symptoms of a broader cultural condition: people are searching for identity, community and recognition in spaces that can also deepen isolation. This conversation explores how new narratives around relationships, self-improvement and gender intersect with urban change, emerging culture and gentrification. As neighbourhoods, meeting places and cultural scenes are increasingly turned into commodities, what new forms of community are being created, and who is excluded from them? What happens when older forms of connection lose their force, and who fills the void? Do these new forms of belonging bring us closer together, or push us further apart?

Where Do We Meet? Rebuilding Third Places

Demos Plateia

Between home and work, cities need places where people can meet, connect and feel that they belong. Elpida Spyrou, and Nestoras Nestoras, moderated by Konstantinos Vrettos, discuss third places not only as physical locations, but also as digital platforms and everyday practices of connection. From urban architecture and neighbourhoods to dating and food, what makes a space truly communal?

Who Fills the Void? The Politics of Disconnection

Demos plateía

What happens when people withdraw from institutions, politics and collective life? The space created by that withdrawal does not remain empty. It is filled by simplified narratives, fear, anger, conspiracy theories and political forces that promise identity, order and belonging. Nikos Erinakis and Kostis Papaioannou discuss loneliness and disconnection as political issues, exploring the crisis of trust in democracy, the rise of the far right and the role of the media in shaping the public sphere. Who fills the void when democracy no longer offers people a place to participate or a community to belong to?

The Panigyri Is Not a Museum: Who Owns Tradition?

Demos Plateia

Following Christopher King’s conversation with Nikos Erinakis, this panel moves from the theory of community to music and cultural practice. Christopher King and Alkyone, moderated by journalist and radio producer Michalis Kamakas, explore the panigyri as a living space of encounter, memory and collective action. Who decides what counts as “tradition”, and who has the right to reinterpret it? From the story of Kitsos Charisiadis and his brother to the ways in which each generation rewrites its songs, rituals and identities, the discussion examines the relationship between memory, power and belonging. It will also address the role of women, the gendered and violent stories preserved in many traditional songs, and the need to decentralise cultural life. How can we draw from the past without turning it into nationalist nostalgia or a frozen image of Greece? And how can tradition become material for a more open, contemporary and collective future?

The Green Post It- find the right words

Demos Auditorium (2nd floor)

Limited to 30 places — book in the app

Run by the green post-it · Stavroula Koulitsi — Content Creator, Podcaster & Editor

Performance by Alkyone

A live performance by Alkyone, blending original compositions with contemporary interpretations of traditional Greek songs.

Closing Party

Demos Center, plateia