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54
Vintage Wedding Dresses and Photos Exhibition
at the Akaki Gymnasium
I
n a bid to urge the youth of Cyprus to learn more
about their culture and tradition, as well as to take
older Cypriots on a trip down memory lane, the
Akaki Gymnasium in the Nicosia District hosted
an exhibition,
Vintage Wedding Dresses and Pho-
tos
, dedicated to dresses and photos from the period
1915-1980. The exhibition commenced on 24 Oc-
tober 2012.
The exhibitionofferedvisitors a host of items, thanks
to a great turnout by local pensioners who provided
the gymnasium with a multitude of vintage photos
and original wedding dresses they were only too ea-
ger to retrieve and showoff.Many of the dresses and
photos on display at the exhibition had been forgot-
ten for decades at the back of many a closet.
The Akaki Gymnasium opened in 1979 and has
since contributed substantively to educating and
cultivating the pupils from the broader western part
of Nicosia. Today the gymnasium serves the edu-
cational needs of the communities of Akaki, Agia
Marina,Astromeritis, KatoMoni, Meniko, Orounta,
Peristerona, Xyliatos and Xyliatou. It sees itself as a
small society, but one that follows the rules of all of
the Republic’s public schools.
“Taking into account the specificities of our
school, and with the cooperation of teachers, pu-
pils and parents for a more democratic approach
to school life, our goal is to create a democratic
school that is interested in the human being, in his
or her intellectual pleasures and inspirational char-
acter,” explained the school’s headmistress, Eleni
Markidou Sophocleous. “Refining our students’
aesthetic cultivation is achieved through activities
that include theatrical education, musical educa-
tion, artworks and traditional dances. The school
cultivates the core values of love, understanding,
solidarity and social justice, values that are crucial
to the modern citizens of European Cyprus in the
21
st
century. In this regard, and to simultaneously
maintain our traditions and customs while bring-
ing them back to light, theAkaki Gymnasium and
Parents Association organised the
Vintage Wed-
ding Dresses and Photos exhibition
.”
The Gymnasium’s effort was part of the school’s