This year's Reveil - Festival of Sound and Ecology was completed with great success on Saturday May 3rd, 2025 at the Flora and Fauna Preservation Park of the Technical University of Crete (TUC). This year's thematic focus was on wildfires. The curator of the festival Dr. Maria Papadomanolaki addressed the topic through different activities aimed at raising public awareness and highlighting its local and global dimensions.

TUC’s EURECA-PRO Team participated in a quite rich programme of activities with the photographic exhibition entitled "Wildfires Through the Researcher’s Lens". The exhibition was made possible through the collaboration of the Flora and Fauna Preservation Park and the Technical University of Crete with the EURECA-PRO TUC Team and the Leverhulme Centre for Wildfires, Environment and Society (London, UK)

The opening of the photographic exhibition highlighted the global dimension of the theme and presented sustainable methods of management and control of wildfires. The eight photographs that adorn the entrance of the park have been taken by doctoral students and academic staff during field research in areas affected by fires. From Turkey and Greece to Brazil and Laos, the investigative lenses of the photographers-researchers engage with the natural world with great care, empathy and sensitivity.

The opening of the exhibition was foreworded with two short presentations by Dr. Evan Diamadopoulos, Professor Emeritus of the School of Chemical and Environmental Engineering and Scientific Coordinator of the EURECA-PRO TUC, as well as Dr. Apostolos Voulgarakis, Professor of the School of Chemical and Environmental Engineering and Deputy Director of the Leverhulme Center.

Referring to the important role of such an action in connecting research and society, Dr. Diamadopoulos stressed that

Today's event is of particular importance because it is an event that is addressed to society and it is also an event that has a scientific dimension but also has an artistic, social, humanitarian dimension and therefore covers a much broader field which is basically the goal of a University but is also a broader strategic goal of the European University for Responsible Consumption and Production (EURECA-PRO) which is a new institution of the European Union.

Dr. Voulgarakis, in turn, emphasized the interrelated relationship between locality and the global context:

We live in a place but at the same time we are citizens of the world, it is nice to understand that what we have around us and protect is part of a global set of environments that we also have to protect. Our team at the Technical University of Crete studies climate change and its connection with fires from the global level to the very local... Environmental problems are not only global or only local, we need to understand the global dimension, but also how to raise awareness and act at a local level. That's why I think that places like the Flora and Fauna Rescue Park and events like this one are very important.

The brief presentations were followed by the cutting of the red ribbon of the exhibition at the entrance of the park, which was done jointly by Dr. Diamadopoulos and Dr. Voulgarakis.

The exhibition was meaningfully surrounded by other activities addressing the topic of wildfires. The screening of the multi-award-winning short documentary by Yiannis Mathioudakis entitled "Ashes" and the discussion with the director himself touched on a series of questions about the management of wildfires at the level of community, state and private initiative.

Researchers from the Laboratory of Atmospheric Environment and Climate Change of the Technical University of Crete spoke about the research carried out by the laboratory on fires, linking them to climate change and sustainability. Lab members led an educational walk through the park with participants to learn in an experiential way to recognize the different species of flora and relate them to fires. The activity was completed with a series of interactive quizzes, where ΕURECA-PRO TUC gave gifts to the best performing participants!

The exhibition will remain at the entrance of the park for the next period and the public can visit it at any time of the day and learn more about the photos through the QR code displayed nearby.