meaningful moments
Anchor points
20 May 2023
Anchor point 1:
Exceptional Transport
On 20 May 2023, we handed over George Dalaras’ bouzouki to the Museum Vleeshuis. This museum is a partner of our project. It is a dynamic music-inspired museum that aims to capture the sound of the city. Under the title ‘The sound of the city’, Museum Vleeshuis brings 600 years of music back to life. Literally!
Housed in one of Antwerp’s oldest medieval treasures, the museum is just around the corner from the former Greek quarter.
Mister Dalaras made the donation out of sympathy for the sailors’ project but also as a tribute to his father’s generation of musicians who came to earn their living here last century. The handover of the bouzouki was realised with a boat trip between Brussels and Antwerp and a procession across the Grote Markt. Several dozen musicians took part, all active in Greek music.
3 October 2023
Anchor point 2:
With United Partners
On 3 October 2023, we gathered with our partners at MAS (Museum aan de Stroom) to get a better feel of IN ΣKIPPERΣTREET. We also looked forward to the expected project results in 2024. It was a first moment of sharing knowledge and a first physical gathering of this surely very large partnership around a very layered project. One of the questions was how to preserve the ‘excavated material’ (f.i. the interviews).
We also watched an artistic short film based on literary work by Greek sailor-writer Nikos Kavvadias and ended the day with a walk in the Skippers’ Quarter.
6 December 2023
Anchor point 3:
Once upon a time there was… Saint-Nicolas
Which Greek customs are still honoured today in Flanders? Hosted by our partner Stadsmagazijn, we brainstormed with several other project partners and
representatives of the Greek heritage community around this question. Fairly quickly we came up with a solid list!
The next question we pondered was: which of these practices are worth registering in the Great Collection that the Werkplaats Immaterieel Erfgoed (Workshop for Intangible Heritage) manages for the Flemish community?
Getting some of these practices registered is one of the aims of IN ΣKIPPERΣTREET. By doing so, we aim to raise awareness around migration heritage and set the example for other heritage communities in which migration plays an important role.
We decided to register the use of tapping red Easter eggs or “tsougkrisma”… around the Easter period. After all, we still needed to celebrate Christmas with
brio first! Not to mention the fact that we were discussing all this on the day when the patron saint of Greek sailors was celebrated: Agios Nikolaos!
21 April 2024
Anchor point 4:
Heritage Day (Erfgoeddag) with the theme 'Home'
On Sunday 21 April, we contributed to the annual Heritage Day with the theme HOME. Nicely embedded in IN ΣKIPPERΣTREET, we wanted to highlight the Greek sailor’s sense of home in Antwerp’s Schipperskwartier in the last century. We started the day by reading excerpts from interviews and published stories of Greek sailors taking Antwerp as the backdrop. We did this in the neighbourhood’s former police station … which has been known as Restaurant Athene for decades now. Then we did a neighbourhood walk.
To stay completely in the mood, Kalitsa Pantazis initiated the dance of Zorba, which transformed this neighbourhood into a mythical place in the 1960s. A Hot Spot!
IN ΣKIPPERΣTREET is a heritage project about the influence of Greek sailors in last century’s Antwerp. We can still find traces of this today. Greek sailors, the Greek community, the Greek church, they are all intertwined. In early October 2024, we will build a gigantic Greek festival on this site to bring this period back to life. Thanks to all who participated in this warm-up!
8 September 2024
Anchor point 5:
Heritage Day Flanders (Open Monumenten Dag) with the theme ‘En Route’
Over time, the daily arrival of hundreds of Greek sailors after WWII created a Greek nightlife area in the middle of the Skippers’ Quarter. Greek music gave colour to the neighborhood. Musicians and dancers, as well as Girls from Paradise, came from Athens and often lingered. The port context made the Antwerp Greeks a small but exceptional community in which openness, entrepreneurial spirit and the time-honoured ‘philoxenia’ or Greek hospitality reigned supreme.
Poli Roumeliotis and Kris Kaerts went in search of all kinds of traces and remnants of this past. With their collective remembrance project IN SKIPPERSTREET they again make visible what was in danger of being lost. They have already developed three themed walks. The bicycle tour is a synthesis of this.
5 & 6 October 2024
Anchorpoint 6:
Bouzoukia
5 October – 14 November 2024
At the Greek
