The Festival of Philosophy in Greece (FFMG) will run until 27 March, taking Italian students together with their Greek colleagues to discover and study Athens, Delphi, Epidaurus, Corinth and Loutraki. The 2025 edition was presented today in Athens at the Italian Cultural Institute with Ambassador Paolo Cuculi, Institute Director Francesco Neri and Festival President Giuseppina Russo.
"We are always close to this initiative that in these difficult times for the world helps to rediscover an important relationship with young people," commented Ambassador Cuculi, while the head of the Italian school in Athens Veronica Sole emphasised how "philosophy is important in this country alongside theatre. And today we are going to talk at school about Parthenope, the only mermaid myth of the foundation of a city'. The event will run until 27 March, with the participation of around 3,000 students, who will live an intense philosophical experience in the symbolic places of western philosophy: Athens, Delphi, Epidaurus, Corinth, Loutraki. The theme chosen is "Philia" and high school students from all over Italy will participate, together with the students of the 14 Greek schools that have joined the Memorandum of Understanding "Ecology of relations, between care and sustainability", of which the Italian School of Athens is the leader, signed on 16 September 2024 at the headquarters of the Italian Embassy in Athens.
"The Festival of Philosophy today in Greece but born in Campania," explains Giuseppina Russo, president and creator of the event, "this year also celebrates the 2,500th anniversary of Naples, which we are the first to celebrate in the country from which the first settlers of Partenope, the ancient name of Naples, arrived, right here in the Institute of Culture that will be among the protagonists of Neapolis 2500. The Italian Cultural Institute in Athens has welcomed and promoted the opening of the Festival event since its first edition in Greece in March 2015, at its prestigious premises in Via Patission. "The FFMG - continues Giuseppina Russo - is the only Philosophy Festival dedicated to teenagers. It is an in-depth cultural event with a strong social connotation: the dissemination of philosophy, in an experiential form, among high school students. The aim is to offer young people opportunities and paths of non-formal education, linked to the philosophical experience. The initiative enhances the Genius Loci by combining cultural proposals and territorial actions through the rediscovery and enhancement of the reality in which it takes place".
Philosophical dialogues, philosophical-theatrical walks, workshops, philosophical AGONs, are the proposals for girls and boys flanked by agoras among teachers and a kaleidoscope of other activities. The FFMG matures an intense curriculum of educational, cultural activities that have involved some 60,000 young people from Italy and abroad in the 66 editions, since 2008 in several annual editions. They experience a space of awareness and encounter in the places where the discipline of philosophy was generated. In its mission, the Festival combines didactic value with the aim of a territorial enhancement project. It was created to re-evaluate places of historical and archaeological interest, symbols of Mediterranean culture and western philosophical thought, during low season periods. The press conference was also attended by the scientific director of the Italian Cultural Institute in Athens, Annalisa Di Nuzzo, and the head of didactic methodology, Salvatore Ferrara, in the presence of students and teachers from the Lanza Perugini High School in Foggia.
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