Helen Glynn, from BP or not BP? said:

‘The Troy exhibition has inspired us to create this magnificent beast, because the Trojan Horse is the perfect metaphor for BP sponsorship. On its surface the sponsorship looks like a generous gift, but inside lurks death and destruction. This is our 40th performance intervention at the British Museum: for eight years our peaceful creative protests have been dismissed and the museum has continued to back BP. Now the planet is literally burning. So we invite everyone to come along to our mass action tomorrow and make sure the museum can no longer ignore the fact that, in order to have a liveable planet, BP Must Fall.’

Those that gathered on Saturday 08 February 2020 to support the activists and the performers, were all targeting BP’s sponsorship of the museum’s current Troy: Myth and Reality exhibition.

Multiple groups from around the world came together in the museum to make the links between climate change, fossil fuel extraction, colonialism, human rights abuses and workers’ rights, using the museum as a backdrop for calls for justice and decolonisation and reimagining what a truly enlightened, responsible and engaged British Museum could look like.

Room 18, The Parthenon Galleries was no exception. Groups gathered to hear Danny Chivers of BP or not BP? helped by Marlen Godwin of the BCRPM, to explain the connection of Saturday's protest againt BP sponsorship of exhibitions at the British Museum, with the unfair 200 year plus division of the Parthenon Marbles. The peerless collection of the sculptures from the Parthenon are mainly exhibited between the British Museum in London and the Acropolis Museum in Athens.

BCRPM has been campaigning for the return of the sculptures from London to Athens, since 1983. The 'new' Acropolis Museum was officially opened in June 2009, picking up an award in London in November 2010. In June 2019, it celebrated it's 10th anniversary and BCRPM helped Hellena Micy sing her song for the Parthenon Marbles in Room 18. Hellena sang  her song 10 times, once for every year that the museum in Athens has welcomed visitors from all over the world. To listen to Hellena's song, please follow the link here.

2020 is also Melina Mercouri year. With that in mind, BCRPM had t-shirts printed for the day and included in the presentations in Room 18 the background to Melina's pleas for the return of the sculptures. We would like to thank the Melina Mercouri Foundation for their kind permission to use the image of Melina on the t-shirt. If you would like to order one, kindly email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Celebrating the activist Melina Mercouri, who had championed for all freedoms, from the freedom of speech and to more, BCRPM also remembered their Chair, Dame Janet Suzman when she had campaigned and protested against  aparththeid in South Africa. These two activist women share a great deal, from acting to their passionate protests, to their love for the Parthenon and its sculptures. To this day Janet continues to be enthusiastic about protests in the BM, so much so that in 2018, she wrote words that Danny Chivers read out in Room 18.

In 2019 at another BP or not BP? protest, Cambridge University stdent Petros Papadopoulos also quoted Janet during his passionate plea for the 'RETURN' of the marbles to Athens.

 And so to the protest on 08 February 2020, Janet's words were heard in Room 18 once again: 

These unmatched sculptures that you see before you have a home waiting for them. These figures, part of an ancient belief system, have been stranded in the grandest refugee centre you’ve ever seen - the great British Museum itself. But home is where they were created two and a half thousand years ago.

In Athens stands a fine building especially built to house them, and this year in June, the New Acropolis Museum will celebrate its eleventh anniversary. On its top floor there are yearning gaps where these very sculptures should be sitting, joined with the other half of the pedimental carvings and in direct sight of the ancient building from which they were chopped, and which, astonishingly, still stands proud on its ancient rock. That fact alone makes these sculptures unique; we can still see exactly where they first displayed themselves, for they were never intended as separate 'works of art', but as part of the mighty whole of Athena’s glorious temple. Who, one wonders, was a mere occupying Sultan to sign away the genius of Periclean Athens?

Now is the time to do the right thing. SIMPLE JUSTICE DEMANDS IT! GO BM! Do it! 

The protest was also covered in Ta Nea with an article by Yannis Andritsopoulos, UK Correspondent for Ta Nea, based in London. 

Today, 18 October 2020, is an extra special day as it marks the 100th birthday of a visionary actress, activist, campaigner and Minister of Culture for Greece, Melina Mercouri. And although she passed away in 1994, the iconic Melina inspired the world, so much so that Greece's Ministry of Culture declared 2020 as the Melina Mercouri year. To this day we continue to reflect on her tireless campaign to reunite the Parthenon Marbles with special thanks and gratitude to Victoria Solomonidis.

Victoria Solomonidis pictured here in the Houses of Parliament with the late Eddie O'Hara

From 1995 until her retirement in 2015, Victoria Solomonidis was a Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Specialist Consultant on Cultural Affairs, with the rank of Minister Counsellor, serving at the Greek Embassy in London.  The issue of the Parthenon Sculptures was high on her agenda: she worked in close association with the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures from its inception in 1983 and actively promoted in the UK all aspects connected with the design, building and completion of the New Acropolis Museum. In 2015 she joined the Governing Body of the Melina Mercouri Foundation. 

Victoria agreed in 2016 at the request of our then Chair Eddie O'Hara, to present Melina Mrcouri and the campaign for the reunification of the surviving sculptures from the Parthenon, the 200 Commemorative Event held at Senate House.

The presentation had the audience glued to Victoria's words. The final slide was a short clip, a video, which we have added across all our social media platforms: facebook, twitter and Instagram. Do watch it here too. Melina's words are as pertinent today as they were then, the campaign will go on until the day that the sculptures currently in the British Museum are reunited with their surviving halves in the Acropolis Museum.  

Photo from the archives of Victoria Solomonidis. From left to right: Melina Mercouri (Minister of Culture for Greece), Eleni Cubitt (founder of BCRPM), Graham Binns (the then Chair of BCRPM) in the British Museum's Duveen Gallery June 1986

In 1986 Melina made her memorable speech at Oxford Union, when PM Boris Johnson was then President of the Oxford Union. Melina's speech concluded with these timeless words: “We say to the British government: you have kept those sculptures for almost two centuries. You have cared for them as well as you could, for which we thank you. But now in the name of fairness and morality, please give them back. I sincerely believe that such a gesture from Great Britain would ever honour your name.”

Melina Mercouri, the then Minister of Culture for Greece in conversation with Boris Johnson the then President of the Oxford Union, 1986.

Melina Mercouri sadly passed away in 1994 and did not have the chance to see the superlative Acropolis Museum. Nor marvel at the superb display of the peerless sculptures from the Parthenon in the Parthenon Gallery or the uninterrupted views to the Acropolis and the Parthenon.

Janet Suzman's obsevations on  the campaign in February 2019 included the article  published by Yannis Andristsopoulos in Greek on Saturday 09 February 2019, in Ta Nea, Greece's daily newspaper. It was also re-printed in Parikiaki, a Greek Cypriot London community paper. At the start of this article Janet mentions Melina's impact:

"Melina Mercouri came whirling into Britain many years ago like a mighty wind, to stir up the clouds of dead leaves that often litter the venerable institutions of this land. She demanded the return of the marbles. She is long gone, but the wind still blows, sometimes stronger, sometimes just a breeze to disturb the quiet. Those winds have started up again." To read  Janet Suzman's statement in its entirety, please follow the link here.

"Melina was an actress, I am an actress; that probably means we are basically open-minded. Acting requires you to be non-judgemental about a character and thus to depict its point of view, often very far from your own in real life, as truthfully as possible. I am no scholar, no academic. My position on the BCRPM Committee is one of a perfectly ordinary museum visitor and as such I can see so clearly that the marbles are in the wrong room. They need the sweet Attic sunlight shining on them and a blue sky beyond; they ask to be re-connected to their other half in the New Acropolis Museum where a space for them awaits. They need to be seen in sight of the Parthenon itself, which still astonishingly stands, in full view of that space, so that I, the visitor could turn my head and exclaim “Now I see - that’s where they came from!” No more gloomy light, no more orphaned statuary. They need to be re-joined to their other pedimental half which sits in this fine museum so that I, the visitor, can understand the whole silent conversation between them." Janet Suzman, 2020

With thanks also to Viola Nilsson from SverigeSRadio for her time to interview BCRPM and the Swedish Committee on Melina Mercouri, you can hear the programme 'Stil' dedicated to Melina by following the link here.

 Melina Mercouri – Greece's brightest star and greatest ambassador..... Actress and politician Melina Mercouri put Greece on a whole new map through her passionate commitment to both culture and politics. This year, 2020, she would have turned 100.

In 1983 the Greek government decided, for the first time, to formally demand the return of artefacts removed from their most famous national monument two centuries before.

The Greek actress turned Minister of Culture, Melina Mercouri, said the British ambassador, Lord Elgin, had no moral right to ship 170 crates of marble sculpture from Athens to London between 1801 and 1804.

The Parthenon marbles are now housed in the British Museum in London, and Melina Mercouri visited it and spoke to the Director of the Museum, David Wilson.

Victoria Solomonides was with Melina Mercouri and remembers the impact the former actress had on the British public.

Witness History: The stories of our times told by the people who were there.

2020: Year of Melina Mercouri
Dr Victoria Solomonidis FKC FRHistS

Member, Board of Directors of the Melina Mercouri Foundation

Why is it important that the Greek Ministry of Culture declared 2020 as the “Year of Melina Mercouri”?

The Greek Ministry of Culture declared 2020 as the Year of Melina Mercouri, a year-long series of events marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of the much-loved internationally acclaimed actress, activist, politician and former Minister of Culture. With her legacy still alive 26 years after her death, Melina’s work was to be highlighted and remembered through exhibitions, lectures, concerts and film screenings.

The inaugural celebration took place last January at the Acropolis Museum, Melina’s most cherished project, though this ambitious programme was hampered by the covid-19 pandemic which led to the postponement of most of the events for 2020.

The initiative to mark this centenary was taken by Dr Lina Mendoni, the Minister for Culture & Sport and, as circumstances were to prove, the plan assumed an additional symbolic significance: Melina Mercouri was known for her indomitable perseverance and spirited optimism under adverse circumstances, her self-awareness and self-discipline, attributes vital in our challenging times, especially in the face of the pandemic.

What is, in your opinion, the legacy of Melina Mercouri to our contemporary cultural dialogues?

Melina’s legacy is multifaceted. A number of institutions encapsulate this legacy in a tangible way:

1. The Melina Mercouri Prize established by the EU Commission and awarded to the annual winners of the European Capital of Culture competition (value: 1.5 million Euros). The scheme was conceived and implemented in 1985 by Melina Mercouri as Minister of Culture and, over the past 35 years, the European Capitals of Culture have developed into one of the most ambitious cultural projects in Europe, becoming one of the best known, publicly salient EU projects. The cities are chosen on the basis of a cultural programme with a strong European dimension, a programme to engage and involve the candidate city's inhabitants and contribute to its long-term progress.

Becoming a European Capital of Culture brings renewed life to the winning cities, boosting their cultural, social and economic development. Many of them, like Lille, Glasgow and Essen, have demonstrated that the title can be a great opportunity to regenerate urban centres, bringing creativity, visitors and international recognition.

Today, Melina’s vision of the project is more relevant than ever. European Capitals of Culture highlight the richness of Europe’s cultural diversity and take a fresh look at shared history and heritage. They promote mutual understanding and show how the universal language of creativity opens Europe to cultures from across the world. Through this institution, Europeans are provided with an opportunity to learn more about each other's cultures, to enter into an intercultural dialogue and to enjoy shared history and values. It is of particular importance that as of 2021 and every third year, the initiative will be open to cities in EU candidate countries or potential candidates for EU membership.

This development would have been be particularly welcome to Melina. Even before the fall of the Berlin Wall, a fruitful and constructive dialogue with the countries of Eastern Europe began on her initiative when in 1988, during the second Greek EU presidency and despite the strong reservations of her European counterparts, she promoted the idea of cultural cooperation between Eastern Europe and the European Union in a bid to open up the borders. The idea was implemented in 1989 with the celebration of an EU sponsored Month of Culture in Eastern countries. The initiative to open up the European City of Culture to countries outside the EU family, would be a source of great satisfaction for her.

2. The UNESCO-Greece Melina Mercouri International Prize for the Safeguarding and Management of Cultural Landscapes was established in 1995, to reward outstanding examples of action aimed at safeguarding and enhancing the world’s cultural landscapes, defined as the combined works of nature and man, a category of the World Heritage List.

Valued at US $30,000, the Prize is awarded every two years to an individual, an institution or a non-governmental organization for outstanding efforts to protect and manage sites that embody an enduring, intimate relationship between people and their environment, in the face of numerous threats, such as unplanned infrastructure development and urbanization, lack of agents to manage landscapes due to depopulation and changes in traditional ways of life, as well as increasing disaster risks and the effects of climate change.

The latest Prize was awarded in November 2019 during the 40th Session of the UNESCO General Conference. The recipient was the Instituto do Património Cultural in Cabo Verde for its outstanding contribution to the safeguarding, management and sustainable development of the Natural Park of Cova, Paul and Ribeira da Torre, an emblematic example of Cabo Verde’s mountain wetlands and one of its most important agricultural ecosystems. The prize money will be used to elaborate a Management Plan, create a centre for landscape interpretation, train young tourist guides and promote female entrepreneurship.

3. The Melina Mercouri Drama Award, presented annually by the Melina Mercouri Foundation to the best young actress of the previous theatre season in Greece. In addition to the prize money of 3.000 Euros, the recipient receives Melina’s favourite brooch as a precious, unique trophy to hold for one year and pass on to the next award winner.
Established in 2007, the Award is highly prized, and the annual award ceremony is one of the highlights of the theatrical season. The Jury consists of five eminent theatre personalities, chaired by the legendary actress Maya Lyberopoulou.

In October 2020, the 14th Melina Mercouri Drama Award was presented to Dimitra Vlagopoulou, for her performance in "The tragic story of Hamlet, a prince of Denmark", based on the eponymous Shakespeare tragedy. Under Covid-19 restrictions, the ceremony took place at the National Theatre, in the presence of the President of the Republic Mme Katerina Sakellaropoulou and the Minister of Culture and Sport Dr Lina Mendoni.

Alongside the Melina Mercouri – Jules Dassin Scholarships, offered annually by the Melina Mercouri Foundation to young Greeks wishing to pursue research at Ph.D. level in Classical Archaeology or Greek Literature, the Drama Award reflects Melina’s concern for the younger generation and her wish to see excellence rewarded across the board.

These institutions epitomize Melina’s concern for humanity at large, for the value of culture and cultural heritage in bringing people together, for the importance of the younger generation and its aspirations. Back in 1982, addressing the UNESCO World Conference on Cultural Policies, she said: “It is time to declare that the concepts of “foreign” or “other” should revert to their first meaning; that is, different or perhaps unique, but never better or worse, bigger or smaller. Let us here together, and each one of us in his or her own country, find a way to give substance to this new vision, making it a concrete reality and making it possible for children in their schools to know, to love and to appreciate the cultures of the entire world.”

Melina’s legacy is as valid today as it was back in 1982.

What is it about Melina Mercouri that has made her a longstanding symbol for Greece? Is it her contribution to arts, culture, politics or something else beyond these? How do you believe, people remember her?

Melina was, and still is, synonymous with “passion”, “drama”, “philosophy”, “justice”, “moral values”, “self-sacrifice”, notions that stem from our ancient Greek heritage and are as classic as the stones of the Athenian Acropolis. From the days of her struggle against the junta of the colonels, and later on, as an MP and Minister of Culture, Melina was a Greek heroine who fought against the injustices inflicted upon the common people. Culture, politics and the arts were the three different roads she walked at the same time, all leading to the same destination: the creation of a better world through mutual understanding and respect.

The general public remembers Melina for her passionate quest for the return of the Parthenon Sculptures, for “putting Greece on the map” in terms of contemporary cultural cooperation and enterprise and, crucially, for her love of Greece and its people, a love reciprocated widely, as evidenced by the hundreds of thousands of Athenians who followed her funeral cortege back in 1994. Melina had voiced her fear that she might be forgotten after her death. How wrong she was!

How do her roles as an artist, as a campaigner against the junta, as a politician compare, in your opinion? Would you say that Mercouri was more apt to a specific role compared to another? Which of these capacities may still have an impact on our nowadays history and how?

For Melina, culture was political, and politics were a matter of culture. She was equally successful in everything she tackled and was a prime example of a woman who took the front stage, even at a time when the female role was relegated to “behind the scenes”. Referring again to her famous UNESCO address of 1982, we read:

“Let us therefore be realists: women still represent an oppressed continent and I am profoundly convinced that one of the first duties of people concerned with cultural affairs is to fight for the humanitarian and democratic qualities of modern societies by giving women their due place in those societies.

This fight has an institutional aspect but, when the political will exists, it is relatively easy to conduct. There is also another aspect: that which relates to mental attitudes and habits which have developed over the centuries and which cannot be ended without the militant and arduous intervention of culture.”

My belief is that at the heart of all her activities, political or cultural, Melina had one great passion and that was Justice, with a capital J. To this end, she explored all possible avenues, used all her attributes and talents to the full.

Could you please tell us about the aims and activities of the Melina Mercouri Foundation? How does the Foundation contribute to keeping Mercouri’s vision for the reunification of Parthenon Marbles alive?

In line with the fundamental ideas and policies that Melina Mercouri envisioned, planned and implemented when she was Minister of Culture, our Foundation aspires to contribute to the promotion and dissemination of Greek culture in Greece and abroad. In Melina’s words, “our cultural heritage remains a leading force, our inner strength and our pride”.

In 1981, during the first days of her term of office as Minister of Culture, one of the foremost priorities she set was the project of conservation of the Acropolis monuments, including the initiative for the reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures. This choice echoed her firm conviction that, as an integral entity of unique artistic value, the Acropolis monuments convey the classical Greek spirit, while as universal symbols, they embody values, principles and ideals which contemporary societies strive to attain.

Reflecting this conviction, the Foundation has focused its activities towards the same direction and, contributing to the overall efforts of the Greek state in this field, works in close collaboration with the pertinent Greek authorities.

Melina’s vision for the reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures is today pursued by many people around the world, with national committees working towards that goal, from the UK, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Serbia and Russia, to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the US, Brazil and Chile. It is heartening to see the younger generation working alongside distinguished personalities, through social media, interviews, publications and conferences in a concerted effort to inform the international community regarding the plight of the Sculptures. The Foundation works closely with the umbrella International Association for the Reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures and its Chair Dr Christiane Tytgart. Mr Christoforos Argyropoulos, the Chairman of the Melina Mercouri Foundation, chairs the Hellenic Advisory Committee for the Parthenon Sculptures set up by the Ministry of Culture in 2015.

How does the Menina Mercouri Foundation cultivate awareness about the legacy, the personality, the artistic and political trajectory and the visions of Melina Mercouri among the young generation?

As I have said, the younger generation was always at the forefront of Melina’s projects, be it internationally, through, for example, the regeneration of urban centres and the creation of work places via the institution of the European City of Culture, or nationally, with the Melina Programme aiming to link culture with education at all educational levels so that pupils and students find pleasure in learning. It is part of the Foundation’s mission to promote her legacy among the young through various programmes, such as the Drama Award and the postgraduate scholarships scheme, but also through a sustained and constant presence in the social media so enamoured of the younger generation.

The Exhibition Hall of the Foundation is open for school visits and the Melina Mercouri Archive, consisting of audio-visual material [films, documentaries, recordings], press cuttings from 1951 to the present, speeches delivered from 1982 to 1994 and some 13,000 photographs constitutes, a rich resource for research.

As all celebrations planed by the Ministry of Culture and by the MM Foundation for the Year of Melina Mercouri have been suspended, due to the coronavirus pandemic, is the Foundation going to put in place online events or does it draw up plans for future celebrations?

It is our sincere hope that this year 2021, which has such a special meaning for our country, will see the implementation of the postponed 2020 events. As things stand at present, it is difficult to make specific plans so…watch this space!

This interview was also published in the Greek Emabassy Newsletter.BCRPM thanks Dr Solomonidis for her decades of dedication to the cause, her archives and source material. Dr Victoria Solomonides worked closely with the founder of BCRPM, Mrs Eleni Cubitt. 

After Melina Mercouri’s death, Eleni collaborated with successive Greek Culture Ministers on this issue.

"During my 25 years as Cultural Counsellor at the Embassy of Greece in London, I have had the pleasure and luck to work closely with Eleni. Tireless, inspired and always on the front line, she was a great friend and generous adviser. She was my great teacher. The thought that she is now joining Melina and Jules is a source of comfort," concludes Victoria Solomonidis, a member of the Board of the Melina Mercouri Foundation.