Networked European Media

As part of the Initiative for European Public Space, ECF is building a coalition to shape a European media landscape. Together with journalists, researchers and concerned citizens, we are drawing and testing a blueprint for a networked European media model based on public values and independent from both market and government.

Through a thematic Culture of Solidarity call to strengthen a European public space, we are looking for projects that contribute to inclusive and democratic European media platforms, networks and infrastructure during the Corona infodemic.

MediActivism

MediActivism has developed as a network of young media-makers and critics across Europe who strive for an inclusive public European media-infrastructure. Media has a role in improving the public spaces that we inhabit in our cities. Ten partner organisations in citizens’-, refugee and inclusive media jointly develop practices and tools for a more inclusive media-sphere in Europe, while focusing on urban issues that are shared across the different cities they are working in.

MediActivism.eu consists of a series of activities happening in different cities of Europe: a Hackcamp, a format of encounter oriented to face challenges by designing prototypes that give an answer to the needs of the local context; a Right to the City Laboratory, a group of diverse participants to implement a campaign claiming the demands of citizenship; and a Policy Fora to foster changes in our cities’ policies regarding the right to the city. These activities happening in different local contexts are connected and scaled up to encourage a broader discussion in the European public sphere.

MediActivism.eu sustains an ever-growing collection of 500+ alternative media created by active citizens, artists and civil society groups from across Europe. This archive includes short films, remixes, mixed media, music videos, social commentaries, animations and artworks that document Europe’s most pressing social issues.

MediActivism.eu

Summer of Solidarity

‘Summer of Solidarity’ is the first pop-up continent-wide, European, collaborative, storytelling media initiative. The ‘Summer of Solidarity’ project aims to knit together a patchwork of human stories through collaborative slow journalism, by going on an e-road trip throughout the continent.

The team behind ‘Summer of Solidarity’ looked for submissions from any and all European countries, in the form of a photograph or a 20-second video (with no commentary), to showcase a place near you this summer.

Visit the website

Collective

Since September 2020 – as a result of the Summer of Solidarity project – Collective envisioned multiple ways to continue the work we have done, funnelling it into a new project that will still retain the same core value: to encourage collaboration and connectedness in the European media sphere, as well as foster solidarity, curiosity and sharing across the continent.

Collective consists of Sara Cooper, Natalie Nougayrède, Mick ter Reehorst and Julie Simond.

They are of the conviction “the self-portrait of Europe is to a degree already being written, illustrated, filmed and photographed.” But they also believe young media-makers and new media formats get left behind. So, they are convinced “it is time for a new kind of media within the European media landscape.”

Collective curates the best under reported stories from around Europe, adding a personal touch.

Europe Talks

Europe Talks is an international online matching and debating platform and a series of local events in which citizens can meet and talk to other people on specific topics of European relevance. The initiative challenges growing polarisation and fosters solidarity by bringing together people of different political opinions across Europe. Newspapers and media platforms in different countries in Europe collaborate in Europe Talks, which is hosted and coordinated by Zeit Online.

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Digital European Public Spaces

Europe is facing real challenges in coping with market-driven and mainly non-European online platforms on which dis-/and misinformation and nationalistic tendencies easily grow and threaten democracy. There is no real European digital public space that is based on values of collaboration, sharing and safeguarding privacy and freedom of people.

Physical spaces for public debate

All across Europe, citizens of all backgrounds and cultures are organising their communities. They create spaces where culture works to strengthen social ties and helps to imagine alternative ways of living and engaging with others in understanding, trust and peace. ECF connects these spaces and thus helps to build a crucial infrastructure for a cultural movement that can reclaim European democracy.

Vision funds

Vision Funds are a placeholder for grants and pooled funding meant for ideas with potential; for responses to urgencies and for projects that make a real difference and imagine solutions.

ECF Princess Margriet Award for Culture

For the last eleven years, the ECF Princess Margriet Award for Culture has honoured laureates as diverse as the cultural fields in which they work. They come from the performing and visual arts, literature, music, film, cultural activism, critical thinking, architecture, digital and media culture. Brilliant, innovative, daring, compassionate – these individuals and collectives have shone out in their resolve to find a better way, even in the face of global upheaval, and to shape a future that is more fair and respectful of both people and the planet that we share.

Connected Action for the Commons

Connected Action for the Commons was an action-research programme and network with six cultural organisations from across Europe and the European Cultural Foundation (ECF) as collaborating hubs. Under the thematic focus Connecting Culture, Communities and Democracy we worked together with Connected Action for the Commons, a network and action research programme.

Idea Camp

The Idea Camp was a three-day incubator workshop for some of the most creative and adventurous ideas from across Europe and neighbouring countries, created by the Connected Action for the Commons Network.

Doc Next Network

ECF has been active in the field of young people and media for many years and specifically through the Youth and Media programme. In 2010, a new network called Doc Next Network sprung up out of this collaboration. Initiated and supported by ECF, the network aimed to create a vibrant European space where young people’s media messages are more accessible in mainstream public discourse.

European Neighbourhood programme

Read about ECF’s European Neighbourhood programme which has stimulated civil society working in culture to influence policy reform and societal development in the Balkans, Kaliningrad, Moldova, Turkey, the Ukraine and Arab-Mediterranean countries.

Trio

In 2011, ECF and Soros Foundation Moldova launched this two-year project in rural Moldova to improve conditions in small-scale local communities facing enormous challenges – growing poverty, high levels of youth unemployment, underdeveloped public services and social disintegration. The programme ran until December 2013.