Kalamara's first day at school was more than she had bargained for: a student sit-in had turned everything topsy-turvy. Yet instead of making an about-face and leaving behind the mess she encountered, she approached a 16-year-old lad, who, spray-can in hand, was about to add his doodling on a school wall. "Why not do a bit of graffiti art on that wall?" the teacher suggested. Disbelieving at first, the students of the technical vocational high school embraced the idea and decided to put their heads (and spray-cans) together to turn a plain grey wall into an award- winning sight for sore eyes.

A while later, a fax from the 24th Directorate General of the European Commission invited local schools to participate in its annual New European Consumer student competition. Kalamara suggested they go ahead with it. A group of eight students - Dimitris Tsakiropoulos, Ioannis Demertzidis, Nikos Psarras, Evi Valai, Sakis Roussiadis, Dimitris Karathanasis, Alexia Tsimika and Nestoras Evangelou along with Kalamara and colleague Dimitris Zervas did their thing on a wall that hadn't been painted since 1969. Their endeavour was funded by the Municipality of Kozani and the parents' association.

From January to March 2000, the ambitious teenagers spent long evenings and weekends at school, exchanging views on how they could best express the competition's theme, The Consumer in the 21st Century . "It wasn't an easy task," explains Kalamara. "We were working against the odds," the school's headmaster, Evangelos Yeorgiadis, adds. Despite the difficulties, the team shifted into full speed: they collected information, got the consent of local authorities, found sponsors, spread the word and filmed their artistic steps. Upon completion, one of the students, Nestoras, composed and performed five musical pieces, which were integrated into the videotaped version of their endeavour. Finally, they put all their thoughts in black and white.