FILMEU brings together four European Higher Education Institutions:

  • ULHT Lusófona University Lisbon / Portugal
  • SZFE University of Theatre and Film Arts Budapest / Hungary
  • LUCA School of Arts Brussels / Belgium
  • Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art Design and Technology Dublin / Ireland

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.

Our Vision

The institutions that integrate FILMEU share the belief that cinema and media arts lay at the centre of social transformations and economic growth which the creative sector can potentially impel if proper collaborative networks are successfully erected in Europe.

Building on more than a decade of successful cooperation, these four institutions envision positioning themselves as key players in driving education, innovation and research in Film and Media Arts within the European Higher Education Area and in promoting the central role the creative and cultural industries can, and should have, in our societies.

FILMEU aspires to build on the Alliance members’ previous expertise in several education and research initiatives, namely in the joint design and implementation of the 4 existing European Joint Master Degrees (EMJMD) “Erasmus Mundus” in the areas of Film and Artistic creativity, and in the joint development of the knowledge triangle linking research, teaching and industry, in order to achieve a high level of integration of its members’ policies and actions though fostering:

  • The ability of the Alliance members to educate future generations of creative artists, armed with critical and creative skills, who are able and willing to contribute to a multicultural, multilingual and inclusive Europe which is open to the world;
  • The societal impact of the creative and cultural industries at local, regional and international level via the implementation and dissemination of jointly developed educational and research activities that integrate the constant production and dissemination of relevant cultural and artistic outputs useable at different levels across the knowledge triangle, while engaging different societal stakeholders;
  • The expansion and improvement of the joint research capacity of the partnered institutions and their ability to disseminate with greater impact the creative outcomes resulting from the education and research endeavours they support, further reinforcing the prominence of artistic research in the European Higher Education Area;
  • The development and implementation of new and original joint programmes, namely at Master and PhD level, with strong mobility features and a focus on innovative challenge-based pedagogical and didactic approaches that cover all domains of the knowledge triangle;
  • The implementation and sharing of common physical and digital structures and services, allowing for the streamlined management of mobility processes, the automatic recognition of competences and qualifications, the provision of virtual and collaborative learning spaces, and the development of innovative research activities;
  • The capacitation and competitiveness of the HEI that integrate the Alliance via the development of common quality assurance procedures, in accordance with the Standards and guidelines for quality assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG), the qualification of staff, and the implementation of common governance and management structures that evenly assure the participation of students;
  • The institutional capacitation of the alliance via the design and implementation of a common branding strategy, common recruitment of students and staff procedures, a joint office for student recruitment and support, and common mechanisms for staff evaluation and talent retention, namely via a jointly designed tenure program;
  • The Alliance members’ ability to better respond to the challenges which the creative and cultural industries face, namely in terms of coping with the uncertainties that these fields experience in many of the involved countries, and the precarious nature of the permanently transitional work they support;
  • Society’s ability to leverage the creative and cultural industries as a means to address some of the greatest challenges with which we are currently confronted;
  • The capacity of the Alliance members to directly apply the culture, practices, processes, and technologies of the digital era to society’s raised expectations on how its cultural industries, and in particular cinema, act as agents of economic, social and cultural change in the public sphere, particularly given that the symbolic content they convey plays an increasing role in the ongoing societal transformations;
  • The positioning of Europe as the main global provider of education in Film and Media Arts, able to attract enthusiastic and engaged students and researchers from all over the world.

Our Mission

FILMEU is focused on long-term strategic collaboration and our mission is to develop a European University that is a model for European collaboration and integration in the fields of the Arts and the creative industries. Our mission is to create a European University that will greatly contribute to Europe’s leading role as a provider of education and research in the creative and artistic areas. Our mission is to configure a European University that fosters the concretization of the knowledge triangle in these fields by contributing to the ongoing structural, economic and material reconfigurations of the cultural and creative industries.

Our mission implies:

  • The design and enactment of a set of common structures of governance;
  • The design and implementation of a common system for digitize mobility management;
  • The sharing of virtual and physical resources;
  • The design and sharing of a number of physical and virtual infrastructures ;
  • The implementation of joint digital services;
  • The design and piloting at the bachelor level of a multi-layered learning experience, building on the specific expertise and focus of each of the partner institutions, that allows students to obtain a common degree provisioned by mobility periods in all the Alliance institutions;
  • The reinforcement at the master level of the currently existing joint master degrees ;
  • The positioning of entrepreneurship education as a vital part of all the programmes offered by the Alliance ;
  • The implementation at doctoral level of a joint program;
  • The implementation of a common model for practice and artistic-based research;
  • The implementation of a common quality assurance mechanism;
  • The sharing of human resources;
  • The reinforcement of the joint offer of programmes and activities ;
  • The implementation of common structures;
  • The design and implementation of a common tenure system;
  • The overall increase of the quality and competitiveness of the involved HEI through the design and implementation of a common corporate identity and the sharing of policies in different domains, from IP management to recruitment and promotion.
Fulfilling this mission implies the Alliance is able to disseminate its experience and the outcomes of its activities at a European and global level.

Our Values

  • FILMEU puts creativity at the centre of all its activities and is committed to open and critical dialogue that sustains academic freedom; FILMEU is based on the conviction that active collaboration, in the form of alliances between complementary higher education institutions from various small and medium-sized European countries, is the only way to attain strategic goals with an international ambition and meaningful societal impact;
  • FILMEU defends the core European values of respect for diversity and human rights, and believes audio-visual culture and the arts play a crucial role in promoting a more equitable and diverse society;
  • FILMEU is committed to the promotion of open science and open access in all the outputs it produces, seeking to apply the contemporary principles of international co-production that underpin the European film industry to the production and sharing of academic knowledge;
  • FILMEU will constantly strive for transparency, putting public accountability at the centre of its dissemination processes;
  • FILMEU puts the students, teachers and administrative staff at the centre of its activities, regarding staff development, student engagement, and teachers’ empowerment as key components of the alliance;
  • FILMEU promotes equity, inclusion, and diversity while pledging to eliminate barriers of all kinds to higher education access, and hence to knowledge and the opportunities it creates;
  • FILMEU believes the performance of the alliance is greatly strengthened by the embeddedness of its activities in local and regional contexts;
  • FILMEU believes the consolidation of artistic-based and practice-led research activities in Europe is a requisite both for the fulfilment of the mission of higher education institutions working in the domains of the arts and for the legitimization of their key role in society. In this context, it is crucial to implement new and original forms of doctoral education that reinforce the knowledge triangle in the field and contribute to the bridging of the educational and research components of the Alliance’s mission.
  • FILMEU is committed to establishing a horizontal management structure that creates spaces of dialogue and interaction between all individuals and institutions, while ensuring everyone’s voice is heard and meaningfully contributes to the development and execution of Alliance activities.
  • FILMEU brings together four institutions that together congregate hundreds of students and thousands of alumni, plus hundreds of faculty and administrative and technical staff, representing the full diversity of European HEI. Currently these institutions offer more than 40 degrees in film and media arts, from bachelor to PhD, from local to European Joint Master degrees. These institutions look at FILMEU as an opportunity to reinforce past collaborations and greatly escalate their ability to intervene at a global level.
  • FILMEU is supported by a structure built upon collaboration and the design and implementation of a common mission based on shared values. By grounding our work in these values, European Higher Education institutions that constitute the Alliance can fully contribute to a better, richer and more humanistic society.
  • FILMEU pursues interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary education as core values to contemporary educational and research practices and positions the arts as a theoretical and empirical field at the intersection of different knowledge and competences that are central in contemporary societies.
  • FILMEU incorporates sustainability as a central value and is committed to examining and implementing sustainable practices at all levels of design and implementation.
  • FILMEU is based on the firm believe that the creative empowerment of individuals is crucial for the enhancement of all educational and scientific activities and the overall development of Europe.

Objectives

FILMEU’s main objective is to implement a European University of excellence focused in the fields of Film and Media Arts. Our long-term vision implies that 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 in the cultural and creative industries and across other societal areas they impact.

The Alliance will develop a joint governance structure that will implement cooperatively designed policies and action plans in order to increase the profile of Film and Media Arts education, innovation and research in Europe and in the world. The Alliance will foster the implementation of a participatory structure and inner programmes across all levels of the partner institutions and will share its experience and disseminate the outputs of its activities on a global scale.

Contact us

Coordinating University
Film and Media Arts Department
sandra.rocha@ulusofona.pt