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.
Our Vision
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 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.
