Circular Cultures Design School 2025

Circular Cultures (Making Matters) is a joint initiative between Onassis ONX and the British Council. With sustainable design and circularity as its main impetus, Circular Cultures annually invites designers to experiment with emerging technologies and reveal new potentialities where the physicality of the materials meets the inexorable capacities of the digital world. The program is part of the activities in Athens by the Onassis ONX, the worldwide new media and digital culture platform of the Onassis Foundation.

Circular Cultures Design School 2025, with Radical Affection as its theme, examines the capacity of design to transform the way we interact both with our environment and with each other.

As technology becomes increasingly ingrained into our lives and digital filters influence how we perceive ourselves, the notions of intimacy and the self are going through a complete shift.

At Circular Cultures Design School, we examine how non-human contacts and digital environments affect our emotional lives and identities. Placing emphasis on circularity and sustainability, we design spaces that meet practical needs while fostering collective growth to extend the life cycles of materials and to promote conscious interaction with our environment.

Furthering last year’s binary theme of “Materiality—Immateriality,” this year’s Circular Cultures Design School explores the coexistence of the physical environment with the digital world, as well as the way we relate to everyday devices and objects.

In the three strands (key topics) of the program, we will look at how we develop emotional bonds with digital and physical spaces, as well as how we create new emotional bonds with inanimate and technological objects that are becoming more and more integrated into our daily lives. Here, the notion of playing becomes a tool for the redefinition of public spaces as centers of empathy, engagement, and connection, transforming the former into interactive environments that invite us to meaningful social exchanges.

Participants will engage in the design of physical, virtual, and hybrid spaces in the form of environments that foster affection, intimacy, and companionship within the communities.

“The term ‘radical affection’ […] is a call for tender acts of individual and collective imagination through which new axes of caring, connection, and resilience might be forged. Calling those acts ‘radical’ speaks to their power not only to transform how we live together, but also to a promise of emancipating people from structures and ideologies that have limited their thinking and thwarted their agency.” —Carolyn F. Strauss, “Seeking Radical Affection”

Circular Cultures (Making Matters) is the British Council's sustainable design and creative economy program in Europe that focuses on promoting awareness of sustainable design, circularity, and the creative industries. It seeks to foster critical dialogue about design and circularity, develop skills and knowledge for leading creatives, and build European networks about sustainability and circularity.In Greece, Circular Cultures is organized in partnership with Onassis Stegi and is a key part of the Onassis Foundation's larger collaboration with the British Council to develop an active public platform for ethical and circular design, materials, and sustainable fashion.Onassis ONX, the Onassis Culture international new media and digital culture program, will join forces with the British Council for another year to organize Circular Cultures (Making Matters), a program aimed at strengthening the dialogue around sustainability, circularity in design and architecture, with an emphasis on the exchange of knowledge and good practices and the development of pan-European networks.

Circular Cultures Design School is part of the Onassis Foundation's international digital arts program, Onassis ONX. Onassis ONX is an Onassis Culture initiative dedicated to promoting digital arts through educational activities, artistic incubation and acceleration services, project development funding, and artist networking and presentation opportunities. Onassis ONX actively collaborates with industry leaders, institutions, and international networks to support the development of immersive experiences using new narrative media such as XR/VR/AR, Artificial Intelligence, Spatial Computing, etc. Originally known as ONX Studio, Onassis ONX was established in 2020 by the Onassis Foundation and NEW INC, soon growing into a global program that supports creators from concept to distribution. Operating in Athens and New York, it connects these dynamic cultural hubs while also expanding local and international new media scenes. Onassis ONX members are active on all continents, and their work has been featured in the world's largest events and festivals, including the Venice International Film Festival, Ars Electronica, and the Plásmata exhibitions in Athens and Ioannina.

The British Councilis Britain's international organization for the promotion of cultural relations and the provision of educational opportunities. We foster a friendly environment of knowledge and understanding between people living in Britain and other countries. We achieve this by making a positive contribution to Britain and the countries with which we collaborate, with the goal of changing people's lives through the creation of opportunities, the development of relationships, and the promotion of trust.

We work with over 100 countries worldwide in the fields of arts and culture, English language teaching, education, and civil society. Last year, we reached over 80 million people in person and 791 million people via the internet, broadcasting, and publishing. We are a British charity founded in 1934 that is governed by the rules of the Royal Charter and is subject to the British public service. In 2024, we will be celebrating 85 years of operation in Greece.

For more information, please visit our Arts Programmes page. To learn more about our work, please follow us on Facebook or subscribe to our arts newsletter.