We envision FilmEU as a significant full-fledged European University of excellence. It will be built on long-term structural and strategic cooperation, common values and core principles agreed at all institutional levels. FilmEU+ will allow us to fully realise that vision by building on previous experience and design measures. We will consolidate gains made and move forward implementing several new transformational modules that will materialize our understanding of what a European University should be. Our vision will achieve a value proposal that meets the expectations of all stakeholders and society.

FilmEU+ is the label for the current second stage FilmEU application. In FilmEU+ we are building towards the substantial deepening and widening of the alliance that will become the FilmEU University. FilmEU+ will consolidate our diverse but complementary programmes in filmic arts and other diverse but related fields across the cultural and creative industries. This will further advance the positioning of Europe as a cutting-edge global provider of education, research and innovation in the multidisciplinary field of Film and Media Arts. FilmEU+ will fully attain all features of the new framework for cooperation set out in the European Strategy for Universities. This means we will make our European University concrete via its European degrees, joint structures and research initiatives that are supported and impelled by a legal statute. It will mutualises our strengths and empowers our institutions and the next generation of talents within the field of Film and Media Arts. With FilmEU+ we foster sustainability, cohesion, entrepreneurship, employment, and, importantly, innovation and creativity.

Students and staff will benefit from the seamless mobility and opportunities for co-creation through our European ‘inter-university campus’. We offer new and flexible curricula and flexible learning approaches based on state-of-the-art research and innovation – tied to practice-based challenges, opportunities, and possible impacts. Our unique position is at the crossroads of education, research, innovation, and the film industry. It will serve both society and the economy by bridging alumni, professionals, other HEI’s and alliances, other areas within the Culture and Creative Sectors and Industries (CCSI), other markets and ecosystems (e.g. crea+tech+business) and other societies and cultures.

We contribute to regional development by extending ourselves across all EUROVOC regions and act as a catalyst for transnational cooperation across borders, sectors and academic disciplines and aid the transformation of the European film and media sector. We foster openness toward cultural and human nature and celebrate diversity. We are committed and activated in the pursuit of the triple transition in Europe: Green, Digital and Social.

We develop and experiment with new technologies and bring stories to life; touching and shaping the hearts and minds of the European citizens and beyond.

We foster technological innovation, artistic creativity and cultural imagination. We nurture internationally competitive students equipped with future-proof skills. We connect and co-create among diverse societies, and in doing so we promote the European way of life, European values and identity.

Our long-term vision implies that by 2033 FilmEU will be a leading provider of film and media arts education in Europe and a core partner for research, innovation, and societal engagement. It will confirm the European Universities model of institutionalised cooperation as an exemplary collaborative structure able to scale the competitiveness of diverse European higher education institutions to levels they would never attain individually.

FilmEU brings together eight institutions with tens of thousands of students and alumni, plus hundreds of faculty and administrative and technical staff. We also represent a myriad of institution types, from research universities to comprehensive ones, from small conservatoires to independent schools within larger Universities, this highlights the fact that we represent the diversity and rich heritage of European Higher Education. Currently we offer more than 50 degrees in Film and Media Arts, from bachelor level to PhD, from local programmes to European Joint Master degrees. These institutions look at FilmEU as an opportunity to deepen and widen existing cooperation, and improve their ability to intervene at institutional, state, and global levels.

FilmEU is supported by a structure built upon collaboration and the design and implementation of a common mission, based on the shared values of creativity, diversity, inclusion, openness, empowerment, collaboration, trust, community, sustainability and the linkage between education and research. By grounding our work in these values, European HEIs 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. The alliance regards the arts as a theoretical and practical field where different knowledge and competencies, central to contemporary societies and their sustainable development, come together.

CREATIVITY

Creativity is the core value of the consortium since we regard creativity as the driving force behind innovation, change and culture. Creativity is a shared feature. It emerges and flows from dialogues and interchanges, in wide awareness of a culture’s codes and modes and in the freedom of their meaningful recombinations. This collective quality comes from individual minds that come togehter, that are driven and change-oriented; that are open, entrepreneurial, imaginative, inventive and problem-solving. Thus, high quality education in inter-cultural exchange and inter-industry collaboration as well as research in the arts promotes and stimulates all of these qualities, skills and values and spreads them across a vast community. The fostering of interpersonal relationships, interdisciplinary dialogues, sustainable and responsible entrepreneurship, media literacy, cultural awareness and high-end digital competences, such as AI use for advanced creativity, are but a few of the key enabling factors that underpin the FilmEU platform for creativity.

DIVERSITY AND INCLUSIVENESS

FilmEU defends and promotes the core European values of respect for diversity and human rights. The project believes that audiovisual culture and the arts play a crucial role in creating and sustaining a more equitable, understanding, inclusive, and diverse society. FilmEU promotes equity, inclusion, and diversity while (and by) pledging to eliminate barriers to higher education access, and hence to knowledge and the opportunities it creates. Our enlargement strategy was designed with the goal of greater diversity and inclusiveness at all levels, from geographies to institutional profiles, thereby making our University a true example of the richness, diversity and potential of the European Higher Education landscape in the fields of the Arts and Cultural and Creative sectors.

OPENNESS

FilmEU is committed to the promotion of open, collaborative science, as well as to providing open access in all the outputs it produces – this includes open access academic journals and platforms where creative and artistic research output work can be freely shared. Among the several benefits of the sharing of academic knowledge, we can also find ways to enhance and innovate in the realm of international co-production, which is vital to the European film industry. In addition to making the outputs widely available, FilmEU adopts a stance in which science and networks have no geographical frontiers, and knowledge is co-created through dialogue in open, collaborative processes.

ENABLING

FilmEU places our students, academics, and administrative staff at the centre of its activities. The Alliance not only provide them with ownership of their duties, projects and tasks (which are the reflection of their own ideas and aspirations), but also regards staff development, student engagement, and scholars’ empowerment and independence as key components. Empowering our stakeholders and enabling their personnel and professional development is key. The European University must represent an added value to all those, from institutions, to teachers, researchers, staff and students that actively participate in it. FilmEU is based on the firm belief that enabling the creative empowerment of individuals is crucial in the enhancement of all educational and scientific activities and the overall development of Europe. In addition, FilmEU, through its conduct, activities and practices, also channels several values that are aligned with the EU frame of eight 'Key Competences for Lifelong Learning'.

COMMUNITY

FilmEU believes that the performance of the alliance is greatly strengthened by its Full and Associated partners and the embeddedness they assure of its activities in institutional, local and regional contexts. FilmEU wants to bridge across all areas of our HEIs, therefore putting the European University at the center of our educational and research mission; a shared vision is a key element of the individual identity of our HEIs in order to foster the emergence of a collective identity that has meaningful societal impact and bridges with other initiatives and stakeholders across the CCI sectors and beyond.

COLLABORATION AND TRUST

FilmEU is based on the conviction that active collaboration, in the form of alliances between complementary higher education institutions, is the only way to attain strategic, long-term goals with an international ambition and meaningful societal impact. FilmEU fosters mobility and a horizontal management structure that creates spaces of dialogue and interaction between all individuals and institutions. This ensures that everyone’s voice is heard and meaningfully contributes to the development and execution of the European University activities.

EDUCATION AND RESEARCH

Education, research and innovation are at the core of what we do but they are also part of what we stand for. We believe in education and research-based knowledge as key drivers of our University’s mission. Bridging education with research in new ways that can help in shaping our European University, is a core praxis and strategy for us. FilmEU values and engages with innovative pedagogical models and an original research agenda, and uses them to the advantage of our University and its shared mission and projects. FilmEU believes the consolidation of artistic-based and practice-led research activities in Europe is a requisite both for the fulfillment of the mission of HEIs working in the domains of the arts and for the legitimisation of their role in society.

It is of utmost importance to put these novel forms or research practices into creative dialogue with fields such as AI engineering, data analytics or social and economic sciences, in order to work towards advanced tools and arrive at a more balanced days of culture and technology development.

In this context, it is crucial to implement new and original activities that reinforce the knowledge square in the field and contribute to the bridging of the educational and research components of the Alliance’s mission. We believe in life-long learning, high-quality education and research-based knowledge as a key driver of a more open and resilient society. Our ambitious mobility goal, including students and staff, is one of the central ways in which to strengthen the alliance and the inspirational experience of everyone involved in it.

SUSTAINABILITY

FilmEU incorporates sustainability as a central value and is committed to examining and implementing sustainable good practices at all levels of design and implementation. FilmEU identifies the UN Development Goals 2030 as priorities in our cooperation and strategy and as a “Partnership for the Goals” is aligned with the SDG 17. FilmEU, and the development, innovation and change that it intends to implement, is predicated on the pillars of environmental, economic and social sustainability.

The network is composed of people and institutions aware of these tenets. This means that, along with the other key values, sustainability is fully spread across FilmEU’s entire field of action.