The Mission of the Aegean Summit

What is the Aegean Summit?

It is a community of progressive media professionals and active citizens with an interest in the wider Euro-Mediterranean and Middle East region. We have come together to push the frontiers of media, communication and civil society intellectually and professionally. We believe that if we align our common goals and visions, we can collectively amplify awareness through media in civil society and have a constructive impact in the fields of education, cultural-social integration, public space, arts, entrepreneurship, economy, technology, innovation and tourism. Our geographic area of focus is Southeast Europe, North Africa & the Middle East.

Who is the team behind this project?

Spyros Ladeas has spearheaded this effort, through step-by-step building a community with the goodwill of our agenda committee and certain people we’ve met along the way: Ibrahim Nehme, Iason Athanasiadis, Ayman Mhanna, Caroline Giraud, Aidan White, Nikos Kakavoulis, Tassos Morfis, Yavuz Baydar, Michael Irving Jensen, Boris van Westering, the Athens Live Team, Ethical Journalism Network and to International Media Support, Free Press Unlimited and GFMD for their guidance and support and all the speakers who have made their way to Athens to contribute their insight.

What is the long-term vision for Aegean Summit?

We want Aegean Summit to be an ecosystem and birthplace for cross-border ideas and proposals and to be a permanent annual forum between Europe and the Middle for media entrepreneurs, journalists and active citizens. We are curious to examine, how collectively, through media and other disciplines we can coordinate and curate themes across counties and platforms to amplify awareness globally on specific topics and show the complexity of perspectives through different communities.  We also aim to facilitate exchanges and guest invitations to each other’s cities throughout the year.   For year 2 and the future, we’d like to potentially include a 1-day music festival, 1-day film festival and outdoor exhibits, stands, markets to find new outlets to engage with our international audiences.

How has Aegean Summit been financed?

This project has not been financed by sponsors, institutes or organizations for year 1.   We decided to just go for it to make it happen and use our own financial resources to set this up for the inaugural event and we are looking for funding, partners and revenue sources for Year 2 to make this forum sustainable annually. We are thankful to IMS for the support, the speakers who made their way to Athens and the registered participants who are contributing financially to cover part of our expenses and to the donations we are receiving through our crowd-rise campaign.  The Aegean Summit is a community-oriented vision: amazing things sometimes are created by determination, goodwill, optimism and generosity.