TILOS – AN EXPERIMENT

Tilos, a small island in the southeastern Aegean sea with around 700 inhabitants, is gradually becoming widely known for adopting unique humanitarian policies regarding social and environmental issues in recent years, such as refugee integration policies that refused a Camp-Model, using instead an open accommodation village directly integrated with local housing. Since 2021, POLYGREEN, an environmental corporation specializing in circular economy solutions, has also applied a unique initiative in Tilos that transformed it into the world’s first certified zero-waste island, entirely eliminating the need for landfills.

In this context, Alavanou was commissioned to create a VR360 educational film in Tilos, with its’ inhabitants as protagonists. The film exposes the journey of material and waste, from the moment they are disposed and sorted in POLYGREEN’S waste management site, to their arrival in factories in Athens or in other sites where they are reused. The experience, which included a narrating voice both in Greek and English, has been presented in June 2024 to all of the 700 residents of Tilos over 5 years of age, who were further informed about how the program is progressing. In this context, they were the first to have the opportunity to express their opinions and feelings created by the VR experience, while being also the protagonists of the film.

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Produced by VRS, directed by Loukia Alavanou, commissioned by POLYGREEN and Sustainable Business Initiative and INSEAD Business School and Carlson School of Management of the Universty of Minnesota. Narrator’s Voice Rena Kyprioti, 360 Ambisonics Sound Design Aris Louziotis, 360 cinematography Lewis Ball.