The Upfront Initiative at Onassis Stegi
Afroditi Panagiotakou – Director of Culture at the Onassis Foundation – was the first to speak at the Upfront Initiative hosted by Onassis Stegi, about the need for equality, inclusion, diversity, and visibility in the workplace.
Photo: George Adamos
“Fluidity is the right to be free. It is a demand we must fight for, while we still can.” With this statement, given at the Upfront Initiative, Afroditi Panagiotakou made Onassis Stegi’s position clear when it comes to discrimination based on gender, sexual orientation, or background in the workplace. In her chat with the Managing Editor of LifO, Alexandros Diakosavvas, the Director of Culture at the Onassis Foundation made clear that Onassis Stegi is not (just) a woman. It is a space that started out as a “queer start-up” and went on to become a “queer scale-up”, offering employment opportunities to social groups with fewer rights due to some innate characteristic of theirs. These opportunities are not limited to arts positions; as pointed out by Nikos Deji Odubitan – Founder and Managing Director of Generation 2.0 for Rights, and a speaker at the conference – such an approach would border on stereotyping. Onassis Stegi brings everyone under the same roof.
The Upfront Initiative is the first conference of this joint LifO and Tsokomos project, hosted at Onassis Stegi on March 17, with its multitude of speakers representing minority groups in civil society, various workplace settings, and leading institutions. With a view to putting visibility into practice, the conference brought various issues debated both inside and outside the workplace to the table, issues such as woman in leadership roles, exclusion on the basis of race or color, disability and accessibility, visibility in Athens, the challenges of applying parent company policies in Greek settings, and the psychological impact of coming out in the workplace.
The conference opened with an address given by H.E. the President of the Hellenic Republic, Ms. Katerina Sakellaropoulou.