FilmEU

FILMEU brings together four European Higher Education Institutions. Together, these institutions collaborate around the common objective of jointly promoting high-level education, innovation and research activities in the multidisciplinary field of Film and Media Arts and, through this collaboration, consolidate the central role of Europe as a world leader in the creative fields.

Together, these institutions collaborate around the common objective of jointly promoting high-level education, innovation and research activities in the multidisciplinary field of Film and Media Arts and, through this collaboration, consolidate the central role of Europe as a world leader in the creative fields.

The consortium integrates four institutions with strong expertise in Film and Media Arts education, a common internationalization ambition, and a long track record of past collaborations that include more than a decade of expertise in the development of European joint projects, including E+ Knowledge Alliances, Strategic Partnerships and “Erasmus Mundus” Joint Master Degrees, besides other joint education and research projects, in order to foster the excellence and attractiveness of the European Higher Education Area.

The Alliance name stems from the concatenation of the terms “Film” and “European” and signals the consortium’s ambition of contributing to the positioning of Europe as a key provider of top level education and research in the creative disciplines, namely Film and Media Arts, and position itself as a leader in this field. The alliance will pursue this via the implementation of original challenge-based pedagogical methods, the development of joint and rigorous academic programmes with a strongly embed mobility component; innovative research activities that span across all the areas of the knowledge triangle.

FILMEU believes Europe has all the right leads needed in order to play in the future a key role at an international level in the area of Film and Media Arts. These include the relevance of Europe’s historical filmic cultural heritage, the dynamism of its production sector, which services all creative outputs from pure entertainment to the highest artistic formats, and the unique educational offer already in place in the form of the Erasmus Mundus EJMD promoted by the members of the FILMEU consortium. These are but some of the elements that highlight the potential impact of the proposed Alliance and its relevance in the European context.

All the partners come from diverse cultural backgrounds and yet we share the language of film and storytelling. Though we are grounded in the visual arts, our different approaches and cultures is our strength. It encourages us to ensure, through the arts and film in its broadest sense, that all voices are treasured and heard. Indeed, this is something that is vital where new technologies are being developed. We need to ensure that new forms of storytelling are not the preserve of any one cultural block. This is not to say that we have a narrow world view – quite the opposite – FILMEU celebrates diversity and it is that praxis – that coming together of all our shared experiences and our differences – that makes this offering authentic and unique.

FILMEU’s main objective is to implement a European University of excellence focused in the fields of Film and Media Arts. Our vision implies that FILMEU must be constituted as an exemplary collaborative structure able to deepen existing cooperation and foster the involved HEI ability to act in the cultural and creative industries and across other societal areas they impact. Film + EU = FILMEU but for us, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

The Alliance is set to transform existing teaching and learning practices by leveraging our individual strengths across borders while internationalising opportunities and collaboration for students and faculty alike. Our core innovation is simple, we break free from institutional, departmental and national silos to embrace interdisciplinary explorations that put creativity and media literacy at the centre of the teaching and learning process. Through this, both students and teachers become creative leaders in a diverse Europe and beyond. We abide by these central tenets:

• Challenge-based learning is critical to innovation;
• Digital media dominates the landscape and is both a tool for and a product of creative learning;
• Rapidly evolving media technology demands elastic sensibilities across the knowledge triangle;
• Cross-border and cross-curricular methodologies define our pedagogy
• Common but flexible curricula empower students and faculty;
• Mobility for students and faculty (physical and virtual) is fundamental to European values and the relevance of teaching, learning, and research;
• Innovative artistic research activities lead to meaningful collaborations with industry, government and cultural stakeholders;

To support these tenets, the Alliance will enact a variety of infrastructures that will efficiently enable our goals, including joint governance and Q&A structures, shared academic and administrative digital resources, a common and original mobility matrix supported by harmonised curricula and seamless processes, common virtual and physical structures, rigorous professional development and student support mechanisms. FILMEU will transform our Universities via the leveraging of curricula and common innovative pedagogical approaches that promote team and project based cross-disciplinary project driven education. FILMEU will transform our Universities by interlinking teaching and artistic research amidst new forms of virtual and physical mobility supported by the shared use of physical and virtual structures that will benefit more than 2500 students and 650 teachers and researchers. FILMEU will transform our Universities into a single entity with multiple campuses across Europe that offer artistic education and research in a unified manner. By 2025 FILMEU must be constituted as an exemplary collaborative structure able to deepen the cooperation between all members of the Alliance and foster their ability to act locally, regionally and globally. The Alliance will shepherd into the approaching mid-century new leaders in academic inquiry and content creation, poised to wrestle with the evolving media challenges of this century and make meaningfully positive contributions to an ever-more mediatized world.