The Pink Box (2016-)

We called it "Pink Box" because the box in which the first proceeds were collected happened to be pink; because, at a later stage, it occurred to us that pink, as a colour, is identified with childhood, love, innocence and a lack of concerns; and, finally, because we... liked it. Pink Box is the open piggy bank we created at the Athens State Orchestra along with the Fluxum Foundation and the Flux Laboratory, sealing a collaboration that started out with the Immigrant Project and an attempt to provide some assistance, however small, to refugees, but most certainly didn’t end there.
The Immigrant Project, and later the Création du Monde, gave Pink Box the impetus it needed to get off the ground, allowing the Athens State Orchestra ensembles to visit schools attended by refugee children and provide educational concerts and thus to ensure a time and a place for coexistence, the alignment of goals, and mutual understanding.
Music is a kind of magical 'Esperanto', a shared language that isn’t subject to distinctions or barriers of any kind. Participating in music, as both a listener and a performer, is the most direct, unmediated and free form of communication there is. All it takes are a few notes on a score to turn Greek and refugee children into a single soul, a single breath responding to the same baton and the same melodies. That is our goal: to provide the most direct bridge for communication and joy between people. And, perhaps, to add a small link to the great chain of Solidarity and Hope.