The PCAI x British Council Tilos Artist Residency, held on the world’s first certified zero-waste island, has come to a successful close. This innovative programme, organised by PCAI and the British Council, explores how the principles of upcycling, zero waste and the circular economy can inspire creativity, collaboration and regenerative thinking across architecture, design, craft, materials and urban design.
Black Females in Architecture (BFA) were selected for this year’s programme; a member-led organisation and social enterprise with a global network of almost 600 members. BFA connects and supports Black women and women of mixed Black heritage working across architecture, design and the built environment.
Through advocacy, research, education and collaborative projects, BFA champions visibility, equality and leadership within the built environment. This approach of bringing together education, creativity and collective action closely aligns with the vision and ethos of the Tilos Artist Residency.
During their Residency in Tilos, BFA collaborated with the residents of Tilos, the Municipality and pupils from the local primary school, drawing inspiration from the island’s sustainable ethos and transforming it into a creative and deeply emotive process of collective memory and storytelling. Exploring women’s identities on Tilos and the vital role women have played in shaping the island’s social and cultural life, BFA fostered an open and meaningful dialogue with the local community throughout their residency.
As part of this exchange, they hosted a series of ‘Living Room Sessions’ in Livadia and Megalo Chorio, met with the Mayor and other women of the island, led a creative workshop with pupils from the local primary school, and held an open session at the studios where they were working.
Through these encounters, they gathered personal stories and testimonies, traditions, narratives, rituals, recipes, and everyday practices, bringing to light aspects of Tilos’s intangible cultural heritage and its living connection to the women of the island, where the oral material gathered through their meetings and conversations with the community became part of their creative and design process.
The artist residency culminated in an open event in Tilos’s central square, at Zero Point, where BFA presented the stories and testimonies they had gathered during their time on the island.
At the heart of the event was a collective work created through a collaboration between the BFA artists and pupils from Tilos Primary School: a tablecloth made from recycled textiles, on which the pupils depicted women and stories drawn from their own lives, using natural dyes made from locally sourced onion skins, cumin, beetroot, sage, eucalyptus leaves and red earth.
The work became a collective record of material knowledge and island identity, bringing together sustainability, local tradition and the younger generation. As part of the event, the BFA team also shared stories of collective memory through a public reading, giving voice to the personal histories, experiences and narratives gathered throughout their residency.
Reflecting on their experience in Tilos, BFA note:
“A huge thank you from the BFA Team to the PCAI and British Council Greece for welcoming us so warmly to the residency on Tilos and your support day in day out with our vision of the programme. Everybody on the ground worked extremely hard to make sure we are able to do what we set out to do which was gather Matriarchal Stories about the Women of Tilos through conversations with the community on the Island.
Without continuous translation, calling various people, arranging meetings and locations, organising refreshments, driving us to places etc., we would not have been able to gather the beautiful stories that we did. We did not really know what to expect but the residency exceeded our ideas of what was possible. Being welcomed with open arms by your team and specifically the people of Tilos, quite literally into Matriarchs gardens, homes and getting to know these incredible histories was life-changing.”
Athanasios Polychronopoulos, Founder of PCAI and CEO of Polygreen, and Kika Kyriakakou, Artistic Director of PCAI, said:
“We are delighted to be collaborating with the British Council for the fourth consecutive year on the beautiful island of Tilos. For the 2026 Tilos Artist Residency, the BFA team engaged with the local community through a series of inspiring workshops and Living Room Sessions, as well as gatherings in Megalo Chorio and Livadia. These participatory and meaningful encounters, closely aligned with Polygreen’s zero-waste ethos, fostered dialogue and creativity, reconnecting people with their environment while also engaging and empowering the community in new and creative ways.”
Maria Papaioannou, Head of Arts at the British Council in Greece, says:
“We are delighted that, once again, the Tilos Artists Residency has come to a successful conclusion, exploring the principles of the circular economy, architecture and design through the lens of women’s artistic practice, storytelling and the empowerment of the Tilos community. The participating British artists, Neba Sere and Lauren Fashokun (BFA), listened closely to the island and its community, taking the programme a step further by bringing to light stories and narratives with the potential to become starting points for new projects in their own right. Our warmest thanks to the entire Tilos community for its openness and participation, and to PCAI for its continued and invaluable collaboration.”
The Tilos Artist Residency is organised in the context of Polygreen’s collaboration with the Municipality of Tilos. Just Go Zero Tilos, an innovative environmental project, powered by Polygreen, was launched in 2022 on the island aiming to develop solutions that promote circular economy and sustainability, and made Tilos the first zero-waste island in Greece.
Credit photo of this page: Maria Dialektaki ©PCAI
Activity aligned with Goals 3, 4, 7, 11, 12, 13, 15
