Call for Proposals: European Festival of Journalism and Media Information Literacy

• Eligibility Criteria:
  In order to be eligible, the applicants (beneficiaries and affiliated entities) must:
  – Be legal entities (public or private bodies)
  – Be established in one of the eligible countries, i.e.: EU Member States
• Type of funding: Programmatic
• Target countries: Europe
• Application language: English

The European Commission (EC) is now accepting proposals for the European Festival of Journalism and Media Information Literacy program.

The “European Festival of Journalism and Media Information Literacy” is aimed at reinforcing dialogue, cooperation, and partnership in the EU among journalists, media outlets including public service media, civil society organisations, and media literacy professionals, focusing on crucial questions for the profession. With special attention on youth, including journalists’ students, people, and social media.

Media professionals would elaborate new proposals for improving legislation and working conditions for the sector at both European and national levels. They would also discuss the implementation of existing rules and set out deliverables in areas such as protection and safety of journalists, social security, new business models for media, the role and impact of digitalisation on the media sector, the role of media in tackling disinformation, or ways to increase media literacy.

Every edition of the festival should produce a list of policy recommendations, key learnings and best practices, taking into account contributions submitted by journalists all around Europe ahead of the festival together with the conclusions of the event.

The “European Festival of Journalism and Media Information Literacy” should become a powerful tool to facilitate discussion between media professionals from across Europe, and an event to raise awareness on the valuable but ever more difficult work of journalists and press freedom violations in the EU.

Expected impact:

The festival would improve journalists’ awareness of existing measures and of best practices. It would also allow national and European authorities to connect and better understand the needs of the sector in the form of an annual structured dialogue.
Every year, the event would produce a list of policy recommendations, taking into account contributions submitted by journalists all around Europe together with the conclusions of the conference.

Activities that can be funded
The following types of activities are eligible under this call for proposals:

• Establish and manage a platform for contributions and exchanges
  1. The platform should be the reference place for the Festival’s activities. It should provide background information on the initiative and ensure the interactions among stakeholders, especially the creation and improvement of networks and exchanges of good practices.
• Organize two annual editions of the festival
  1. The events should be organized in hybrid mode, the first edition in 2023 (Q4) and the second one in 2024 (Q2) in one location in the Union. It is expected that each session of the festival would last between two and three days and would gather around 500  participants.
  2. Each session would combine debates, presentations, technical workshops, training sessions, and presentations of the topics selected by the festival organisers. Different venues can be used in a single location.
• Production of guidelines, key learnings, and best practices in the form of reports on the challenges faced by the media sector
  1. Each report of the festival should present the main challenges in the implementation of legislation and working conditions for the sector, map initiatives at the national level addressing the challenges, and present relevant case studies. The observations and conclusions of the reports should be presented at the festivals.
  2. The applicant must describe the scope of such reports and the methodology for their development.
• Organise awareness and dissemination actions
  1. Proposals must contain solid communication plans, both for the run-up to the events and after the events.

See here to learn more and apply.

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