Call for Partners

The process is now closed. Selection concluded.

Enlargement of FilmEU

Following EU recommendation, FilmEU is promoting an enlargement of its Alliance with the objective of bringing into the Alliance new full partners. We see this as an advantage for future growth and development.

We will assess future partners in line with the criterial set out below and invite conversations with HEIs that feel they would meet the criteria below and feel they would add value to the consortium. Our ambition is significant, and we welcome partners who can display that same vision. Only HEIs awarded with an Erasmus Charter can apply for full partnership status. All future partners must agree to the principles set out in the FIlmEU mission statement outlined below.

Procedure

Potential partner submits an expression of interest (until March 15th 2022 by email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. following the selection criteria)
Meeting with a potential partner by 2 PMB members to brief on FilmEU
Potential partner submits initial application based on the criteria
Meeting to discuss the application with PMB members
PMB site visit to partner
FInal application submission
PMB evaluation and decision

Selection Criteria

Criterion	Notes	Weighting
Geography	We need to ensure geographic spread across the Union.	10%
Autonomy	HEIs should display a degree of autonomy flexibility in their decision-making process – in line with national frameworks. Must be eligible for Erasmus funding. Cannot be part of an existing EU alliance.	10%
Film School Background	Should have a strong pedigree in the screen arts.	20%
Track record on internationalisation/mobility	Evidence of strong international partnerships and engagement	10%
Discipline expertise	Specialism in relevant areas. Expert facilities related to the area.	10%
Research profile	Strong research profile. Provision of programmes ideally to L10	10%
Historical relationship with current partner(s)	Evidence of past associations with the current partners would be of benefit.	10%
Added value to the consortium	What added value elements would your institution’s involvement bring to the consortium.	20%

The European Universities Alliance for Film and Media Arts

FilmEU brings together four European Higher Education Institutions: Lusófona University from Lisbon, Portugal; Baltic Film, Media and Arts School - Tallinn University (BFM), from Tallinn, Estonia; LUCA School of Arts from Brussels, Belgium; and Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art Design and Technology, from 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; the sharing of physical and digital infrastructures, administrative services and human resources at all levels; the development of common recruitment, student support and quality assurance policies; the sharing of digital services that facilitate cross-disciplinary educational activities, and the implementation of a common governance and management structures that will allow the Alliance to better capacitate its members and involved students and staff and act at a local, regional and international level positioning itself as a model of collaboration and innovation in the arts and creativity domains.

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.

We espouse a world view that is progressive and inclusive. Society is informed and shaped by the stories we tell and how we tell them. FilmEU can and therefore will be a force for positive social change. Issues like climate change, gender inequality, diversity and social justice are just some of the issues that inform the shared philosophy of this offering.

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. In order to do so, they are ready to further deepen their existing collaboration by: developing and implementing a joint governance model that engages all stakeholders including students; reinforce mobility within the Alliance via the implementation of digital tools that will swiftly and securely simplify the process; develop new joint programs while harmonizing the curriculum and pedagogical approaches of existing ones; increase the sharing of resources, services and staff, namely in the context of joint educational and research activities; and jointly work in order to increase the overall capacity and competitiveness of the HEI that integrate the Alliance.

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 that assure a united strategy, identical policies and common rules amongst the Alliance members, that are supported by a unified branding and communication strategy and the implementation of a set of structures and boards that give voice to all the individuals and institutional stakeholders participating in the Alliance;
The design and implementation of a common system for digitize mobility management that is compliant with the principles of EWP (Erasmus Without Paper) and facilitates the automatic recognition of mobility periods and the issuing of joint diplomas across the Alliance;
The sharing of virtual and physical resources that support education and research in Film and Media Arts, with particular attention towards a common library of digital resources; a common didactic tool to be used in the context of students’ developed projects; a common virtual learning environment and interaction system, and a common mechanism for the dissemination of creative works – FilmEU Open;
The design and sharing of a number of physical and virtual infrastructures in the form of a network of labs called “FilmEU HUB” focusing on key areas of education and research that are united by a common communication and management system;
The implementation of joint digital services in different areas ranging from the coordination of student and teachers’ mobility, to the issuing of certifications, and to the management of academic activities such as joint filmic productions and facilities;
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 and the leveraging of existing competencies by designing and implementing another three such programs, an expansion that will allow the Alliance to cover, via joint master degrees, the full spectrum of disciplines that Film and Media Arts education entails;
The positioning of entrepreneurship education as a vital part of all the programmes offered by the Alliance via the integration of s subject dedicated to entrepreneurship and critical literacy and the promotion of an entrepreneurial mind-set via the promotion of a tailored physical and virtual incubator;
The implementation at doctoral level of a joint program with a common supervision mechanism focusing on the setup of a community of early-stage researchers on film and media arts;
The implementation of a common model for practice and artistic-based research, that consolidates alternative paths for PhD in this field and reinforces the societal impact of the knowledge produced in the institutions that integrate the alliance;
The implementation of a common quality assurance mechanism based on the European standards for quality assurance (ESG), supported by a procedural model to be made available to the arts education community in Europe;
The sharing of human resources for educational, research, and supervision activities including the implementation of a common program for the essential education of teachers in pedagogical methods and the professional development of administrative staff;
The reinforcement of the joint offer of programmes and activities that attract students from all over the world in order to build a multicultural community of engaged and critically aware citizens;
The implementation of common structures, namely a student board, that can facilitate communication and engagement across all involved stakeholders;
The design and implementation of a common tenure system that can help the Alliance in attracting and retaining top talent;
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.

Specific objectives

To enable students via the design and implementation of common degrees with harmonized curriculums and alternative paths of specialization and embedded mobility, greatly improving the experience of a diverse student body, enabling staff and teachers via professional development across all partner institutions; enabling institutional stakeholders and the film and media industry across Europe through the promotion of a knowledge triangle which brings their expertise and needs to the centre of the educational process, thereby promoting the acquisition of competences that, while academically rigorous, are also better aligned with industry and societal needs;
To design and implement a digitized system for mobility management supported by already-existing solutions crafted by the EU for the implementation of an Erasmus Without Paper program and the associated systems for documents issuing and recognition, including the joint implementation of the European Student Card;
To design and implement a network of centres of competences named “FilmEU HUB” based on a number of common infrastructures – labs – that span the main areas of research and technical expertise on which the consortium is focused and support an innovative challenge based pedagogical model that integrates the main strengths of film education such as cross-disciplinary project development, team-based work and the intensive use of media technology though allowing for the uptake of essential skills such as creativity, problem-solving, peer-learning and collaboration;
To design and implement common virtual spaces and digital tools for learning and services including a virtual learning and collaboration space, a common production management tool, a common media management tool and repository, and a common media facilities and equipment management tool;
To harmonize existing curricula at the bachelor level towards the implementation of a new international bachelor’s degree in film that corresponds to an original educational offer and learning models and the facilitation of mobility amongst existing programmes;
To design and implement three new EMJMD in the areas of sound, Film Heritage and videogames;
To design and implement a joint PhD program in Film and Media Arts supported by a common supervision model and shared HR;
To design and pilot an original lifelong learning program in the area of media arts;
To embed in all existing educational programs a subject with a focus on entrepreneurial skills;
To design and pilot a common quality assurance system based on the European Standards and Guidelines (ESG);
To design and implement a common staff development program focusing on pedagogical competences;
To increase the ability of the Alliance to attract and retain talent via the implementation of a common tenure system;
To design and agree upon joint management and governance structures including a dedicated student board;
To implement a common model and joint services for student mentoring and support;
To implement a common framework for IP management namely in relation with the protection of creative rights;
To increase the levels of attractiveness of the involved HEI in order to strive for a multicultural and multilingual university via common promotion and recruitment strategies and tactics, supported by a common branding and a centralized student support office;
To globally reinforce the ability of the Alliance to act locally and globally;
To be recognized as one of the main providers of high-level education and research activities in the areas of Film and Media Arts at an International level, with a constant presence in the top positions of international rankings and an active participation in all organizations in the field.