Final MediaFutures Accomplishments
As the H2020 MediaFutures project recently ended, Alexandra Garatzogianni, Coordinator of the MediaFutures Project and her Project Management Deputy, Michael Fribus, are happy to share some of the final results and accomplishments of the project throughout its duration of three years.
We proudly announce that we have successfully concluded three open calls, attracting high-quality applications from a great diversity of countries, and distributed €2.5M among selected SMEs, startups and artists in all three cohorts and all three tracks per cohort. Throughout the MediaFutures Support Programme, we supported 51 startups or SMEs and 43 artists across 54 mostly European countries. In the end, the MediaFutures consortium funded, trained and supported 25 SfC Teams (for the Startup for Citizens track), 27 SmA Teams (for the Startup meets Artist track), and 15 AfM Teams (for the Artists for Media track).
“MediaFutures was an ambitious and challenging project. With great collaboration at the level of the MediaFutures consortium, we managed to achieve and surpass the objectives and KPIS, set at project start, and thus conclude successfully our project. With our acceleration programme, we achieved a positive social, business and scientific impact by supporting financially and delivering a customised training programme to a plethora of exceptional SMEs, startups and artists, encompassing diverse skill sets, ranging from data and media scientists, to creatives. I would advocate that projects, such as MediaFutures, delivered by a richly diverse consortium, combining expertise in distinct domains, contribute substantially to fostering entrepreneurship and welfare,by providing means required to explore and grow new ventures.”
Alexandra Garatzogianni
The MediaFutures Team developed a Toolkit as a resource for innovators and artists as well as everyone working in-between business and arts. The focus of the toolkit is on art/AI interactions and their application to counter misinformation. It enables the use of the arts, and trans-disciplinary STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics) approaches more widely, to increase understanding of and participation in AI by a larger part of the public.
We have submitted all 39 deliverables successfully which were all approved and which can be seen in the “Resources” section of our MediaFutures website.
As an EU project that focussed on entrepreneurs, startup companies and artists, the MediaFutures project managed to reach a broad audience: with over 1,000 followers on Twitter, over 1,360 followers on LinkedIn, over 880 followers on Instagram and 100 subscribers on YouTube, we managed to disseminate the outcomes of our project on a broad scale. Overall, we have reached a very broad audience of estimated 330K people.
In our three Policy Briefs on “Ensuring Ethical AI Practices to counter Disinformation”, “Media Innovation in Entrepreneurship and Arts” and “Legal and Ethical Challenges for Start-ups and Artists”, we address various issues in the media and entrepreneurship spheres and provide recommendations for action for several stakeholders such as start-up companies, artists, the European Commission itself, public institutions, among others.
Moreover, four Interviews on “Open Calls, Project Evaluation & Diversity”, “Collaboration between Startups and Artists”, “The MediaFutures Support Programme”, and “MediaFutures Approach” were conducted and published on our website where the MediaFutures project colleagues presented the lessons learned on the above-mentioned themes. On our “Resources” site, we have published various brief videos of our project members who shared their insights and experiences that they made during the MediaFutures project.
Furthermore, we have selected 7 teams across all three cohorts as especially successful cases, namely Overtone, Hammer & Egg, Edit Wars, 730 Hours of Violence, The Oracle Network, Soft Evidence and Critical Climate Machine.
Last but not least, in the process of the project, we concluded various workshops, plenaries and meetings both online and offline. In particular, we organised a project-internal workshop on the creation of the MediaFutures Business Model Canvas. The results of this workshop can be seen in D6.2 – Exploitation Implementation.
In a nutshell, it can be concluded that MediaFutures was a highly relevant and future-oriented project and we are very proud to announce that we have concluded it successfully.
Leitung Wissens- und Technologietransfer, Koordinatorin von EU-Projekten // Head of Knowledge and technology transfer, Coordinator of EU Projects
Stellvertreter Kommunikation und Verbreitung PLATOON // Communication & Dissemination Deputy
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