From 16 to 21 June 2025, Athens hosted the latest chapter in the European journey of Soundroutes, the project co-funded by Creative Europe that for two years has been bringing together young artists from across Europe in the name of hip hop as a language of resistance, solidarity and justice.
Organised by the Chios Music Festival and led by rapper and producer Panagiotis Simopoulos, the International Bootcamp in Athens brought together 15 artists from Greece, Italy, Belgium, Spain and Mexico for a week of training, co-creation and collective performance.
Writing together to rewrite the world
Every morning, after breakfast together and a short trip to the workshop venue, the group immersed themselves in hours of writing, beatmaking and recording.
The journey began with a listening and sharing session: each participant brought a song or text that represented their musical and political universe. From there, with Simopoulos’ support, the first experiments in blending different styles, languages and sounds were born.
In the following days, the participants divided into small groups to work on original songs, intertwining Italian, Greek, Spanish, French and English in a sonic dialogue that gave rise to five unreleased tracks.
One of the songs was created collectively by everyone as a political manifesto for the bootcamp: a declaration of unity and freedom built by many hands, voice after voice, verse after verse.
The city as a political laboratory
Athens, with its layers of history, conflict and rebirth, was more than just a backdrop: it became a living part of the journey.
Each day of work ended with an urban walk between Syntagma and the alleys of Exarchia, the political and artistic heart of the city.
During one of the outings, the group participated in an event dedicated to local products from the island of Chios — a way to link music to the land, local economies and practices of autonomy.
‘Athens taught us that every street has a rhythm, every word a story of struggle,’ says Belgian artist Lauria Gatoni. ‘Here we realised that hip hop is not just an urban culture, but a way of building community anywhere.’
Creating bonds, beyond borders and languages
Alongside technical sessions — on songwriting, recording and production — the bootcamp built a safe and convivial space in which to exchange ideas, learn and take care of each other.
Informal moments — shared dinners, impromptu night-time rehearsals, chatting in multiple languages — became an integral part of the creative process.
On 20 June, the week ended with a public concert presenting the songs created during the workshop to the audience. On stage, the multiplicity of voices transformed into a single collective sound: a mosaic of rhythms, accents and visions.
Two video clips (link 1 | link 2) recount the experience, including moments of work, improvisation and communal living.
Hip hop as a shared revolution
The Athens Bootcamp once again confirmed the political soul of Soundroutes: a project that makes hip hop culture not a product, but a practice of liberation.
From the streets of Ghent and Rome to Seville and Athens, Soundroutes has built a network of artists who, through music and words, challenge inequalities, celebrate diversity and claim the possibility of a Europe based on solidarity, creativity and social justice.
‘We have learned to write collectively, to trust each other and to let the music speak for us,’ said Panagiotis Simopoulos, Bootcamp coach. ‘In a fragmented world, Soundroutes reminds us that culture is still capable of uniting.’
Athens marks the end of a cycle, but not the end of a journey.
The voices that have come together over the past few months will continue to resonate in future projects, in collaborations born out of bootcamps, in shared tracks that tell the story of a different Europe: not one of borders, but one of beats and collective revolutions.
