FILMEU – European Universities Alliance for Film and Media Arts

The European Union has just published the results of the 2020 call of the European Universities Initiative, a brand new European initiative that supports transnational alliances that will become the universities of the future, promoting European values and identity, and revolutionising the quality and competitiveness of European higher education. FILMEU is one of the 24 new European Universities alliances that have been selected involving 165 higher education institutions from 26 Member States and other countries participating in the Erasmus+ programme. Universidade Lusófona will lead a consortium of four Higher Educational Institutions and several associated partners, from education to industry, selected to create the first European University in the area of Film and Media.

FILMEU brings together four European Higher Education Institutions: Lusófona University from Lisbon, Portugal; SZFE – University of Theatre and Film Arts, from Budapest, Hungary; 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 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 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’s main objective is to implement a European University of excellence focused in the fields of Film and Media Arts. The consortium 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. Complementary objectives include the design and implementation of joint degree at all levels, from bachelor to PhD; the implementation of common services and infrastructures and the implementation of joint mobility management services, namely in the context of the EWP – Erasmus without paper – initiative and the European Student Card.