The connect retinc social goods

Argyro is a cultural manager specialized for the tourism sector and holds a track record of planning and coordinating creative events with national reach for independent artists, major Greek festivals and international institutions for the last 15 years. Shaping a new urban mentality with participatory practices motivated her to support initiatives like AntiDimitria, Thessaloniki Otherwise and TEDx Thessaloniki in the past, while in 2014 she co-founded FEAST Greece, an offline crowdfunding platform that brings creative ideas to life. She is passionate about upgrading the creative class, transforming the Greek cultural ecosystem and she always looks for new collaborative working methods and lifelong learning opportunities.

Adeshola Adetunde Adefioye, or simply Tunde, was born in Los Angeles (CA) to a Nigerian father and an African-American mother. He grew up in part in “The Bottoms” of Inglewood, but nevertheless remained focused on his studies. He earned a degree in Women's Studies (2003) at San Diego State University and a post-bachelor's degree in Molecular Biology (2006) at San Francisco State University and a master's degree in Bioinformatics (2007) Leeds University (UK). He ended up in Belgium for a PhD in Bioinformatics at the KULeuven.

Besides Women Studies and science Tunde has another passion: Urban Poetry. Urban Poetry is a word art form that originated from the city of youth culture (also known as the 'urban' culture) and consists of several movements like rap, slam and spoken word. Los Angeles is one of the global capitals of Urban Poetry where it is immensely popular.

In Leuven he founded a poetry group with some local and international students, with the aim of involving young people who have difficulty getting in touch with literature and culture. From this group emerged the concept/organization of  Urban Woorden in 2009 (www.urbanwoorden.be) . This organization grew quickly and was rewarded in 2013 with the Culture Prize for Cultural Education of the Flemish Government.

Neda Sokolovska is a theater director, documentarian and the creator of Studio for documentary theatre VOX POPULI. 
She introduced and is developing the “verbatim” technique in Bulgarian theater since 2012. Neda is the director of the plays: “Mothers” (nominated for Best play in the Askeers 2013), “Yatze forkash” (won an Askeer 2013 for Best script), “Ale hop” , “Ascertained during inquest” and the well-known series “Invisible” which explores the live of marginalized and “invisible” to the society social groups. She has won the award of the Ministry of Culture for achievements in the Bulgarian culture. Since 2016 she has initiated the art platform “V/hod” (“N/try”) in partnership with The Red House Centre for Culture and Debate - Sofia”, which creates an environment for exploring reality through art as a tool.

Bepart is a start up that employs augmented reality to fill the city with art, design, videos, sounds and words, so that everybody can create and install different contents or simply enjoy them in the urban spaces by means of a tablet or a smartphone.

Bepart makes it possible to redraw urban sceneries integrating digital contents into real spaces.

This means going beyond physical barriers enhancing the conceptual and relational values of a message. This stimulates a dynamic cultural approach to reality.

Bepart works on emerging trends in new technologies, media and art. New concepts such as “infosphere”, "prototyping" and “digital environment” are developed, in order to promote a new type of contents, abreast with contemporary fruition.

Installations, contests, upgrading of urban spaces, augmented exhibitions, art challenges are among the possible employments of this new language.

The original idea for this enterprise dates back to the summer of 2013 when the three founding members decided to join their experiences and intuitions in a brain storming process to develop a common project with a high social impact.

Bepart is a scaling project. Its goal is to create connections among cities worldwide so that everybody can enjoy or share their own contents in augmented reality.

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Renny and Angel have a unique story. They met at the first “Baba Residence” and a year later they had a completely authentic Bulgarian wedding, like old times. She loves traditions and ethnology and he teaches programming. Together they want to create a connection between the two. “Nishan” is their joint initiative for recreating traditions through new technology. 

IgralO is the first product of the “Nishan” initiative which brings traditions to life through new technology. It’s a wooden puzzle game which teaches kids of all ages about the workings of digital displays and at the same time they can learn about traditional elements of the Bulgarian national dress – “embroidery (shevitsi)”. During EMPATHEAST you’ll have a chance to assemble the puzzle and play with friends.  

Jason NARDI is an Earth inhabitant born in Florence, Italy. He also happens to have a US citizenship, thanks to his mother.  An activist since youth, he has worked and campaigned for many different causes and is a member of several civil society networks and organisations.

An advocate for social justice, ethical finance and communication rights, he is an active member of the International Council of the World Social Forum, has been organiser for Terra Futura (Italian yearly event on Social solidarity economy with more than 50’000 participants) and has co-created Zoes.org – the first Italian social network for SSE. With a background on Communication and media (Princeton University, USA and a Master’s degree at the University of Florence), he has been director of the Italian center of Oneworld.net – Unimondo (www.unimondo.org). Since 2015, Jason is general delegate for RIPESS - Solidarity Economy Europe network (ripess.eu) and is part of the RIPESS Intercontinental board of directors.  

Recently he’s worked on an app to map European SSE initiatives and on a game on Ethical Banking with the Banca Etica Foundation. In his hometown, Florence (Italy), he’s promoting the CSA Community Supported Agriculture network and Solidarity Economy District. He’s also a trainer on Solidarity Economy topics and co-founded Solidarius in Italy (solidarius.it), a research-consulting organisation to help develop solidarity economy networks, part of a Brasilian based international network (Solidarius.net). 

In his free time, Jason enjoys walking in nature and bike-riding, acro-yoga and playing the clarinet in a street band.

Matina Magkou is a free lance manager, researcher and trainer in cultural and civil society initiatives. She collaborates with Greek and international organisations, cultural institutions and civil society organisations for the delivery of projects. Previously she has worked for the Athens 2004 Olympic Games, the Patras 2006 European Capital of Culture, the International EXPO Zaragoza 2008, the Doha Film Institute, the Athens Festival, etc. She holds a BA in Languages, an MA in European Studies and an MA in Cultural Management, Policy and Communication. She is currently finalising her PhD in the evaluation of international cultural cooperation projects with a focus on the EuroArab region. She is in the board of Ohi Paizoume/ UrbanDig project and is responsible for International Cooperations and Development.