<< Background >>Europe is a wonderful place when we think of the cultural richness and diversity that exists on this continent, or of the achievements of our evolved democracies. But Europe needs an education system that takes all the people who live here along and gives them equal opportunities and chances to participate, especially in the arts and culture. This is the only way to prevent a dangerous division of society, that starts at the national level. It is a big task, and there is still a lot to do here. The schools, cultural institutions and universities involved in E*CCAJ and spread over four European countries want to join forces to do their part for the inclusion of young, disadvantaged pupils – with the power of arts education. Because: some young people in European schools are not visible to each other or even themselves. We feel strongly that the program CCAJ, through creative encounters between young people from different schools, through their participation on cinema as art, will enable them to see themselves and each other, to share their lives and passions and identities - both on screen and behind the scenes. But to make these encounters successfully happen, teachers need tools and expertise, which can be provided by developing pedagogies with filmmakers, and further developed and exchanged between each other. Furthermore, since the outbreak of COVID-19, our target groups of young people (and teachers and filmmakers) have experienced more isolation, but at the same time have been put in reach of each other, and culture, through digital means. E*CCAJ addresses all these challenges by initiating a European learning community over three years, across geographical borders and sectors.<< Objectives >>Objective 1: The renowned film education project CCAJ will be transferred into a new European constellation and methodically developed further. New reusable products & training formats will be created. Objective 2: The positive effect of this film education project and its special methodology on disadvantaged students with regard to the acquisition of Key Competences, empowerment and inclusion is to be examined as an example. Implicit experiential knowledge that has grown over years in the pedagogical leadership / in the tandems of participating artists and teachers will be made explicit and can be shared. The significance of the project and its many dimensions can be better classified in terms of educational policy. It is opened up for further research and serves to develop research perspectives and methods for aesthetic film education. Objective 3: All project participants (students, teachers, filmmakers, mediators, cultural organizations, universities) engage in an intensive examination and learning process on film education and broaden their horizons, network, etc. through participation in a European project and the mobility that comes with it.<< Implementation >>E*CCAJ will implement teacher training in film education as well as long-term learning activities for disadvantaged pupils in four European countries: Portugal, Bulgaria, France and Germany. This will be accompanied by a research-based evaluation (observation, interviews) organized by two Universities in France and Germany. Furthermore, we will organize a international cross-sectoral in-depth exchange and reflection on methodologies and pedagogical approaches on arts education & inclusion.<< Results >>see annexed PDF

The Holocaust is a central reference point for European history and a ‘negative founding myth’ of European integration. VHH is an innovation action that focuses on the digital curation and preservation of film records relating to the discovery of Nazi concentration camps and other atrocity sites. We combine state-of-the-art concepts and practices from information science, museum pedagogy and digital storytelling to design a new approach for the engagement with a significant aspect of European audio-visual heritage. While the majority of these film records are in the public domain as they were produced by Allied military personnel on government order, hardly any of them are available in digital formats fit for the purposes of technology enabled research, analysis, and curatorial re-use. Building on the advanced digitisation of a relevant selection of these materials VHH will develop new methods in digital curation and apply sophisticated technologies to the analysis and time-based annotation of these historical materials. Filmic records will be dynamically linked with photographs, audio, and texts in order to discover and unlock layers of context and meaning inaccessible through traditional linear narrative modes of dissemination. Our aim is to develop a ground-breaking inclusive concept of digital curation to innovate curatorial work with digitised film and media collections and to create best practice models and tool kits for advanced digitisation, automated analysis, linking of different media types, and the linking of tangible and intangible assets. VHH will develop new forms of learning experiences and user interaction with the digital data and the stories contained in it. We will curate a discrete set of engagement levels to facilitate users’ engagement and co-creation. The resulting prototype applications will deliver new impulses to a range of industry sectors in education, museums, libraries and archives, cultural tourism and the content industries.

I-Media-Cities is the initiative of 9 European Film Libraries, 5 research institutions, 2 technological providers and a specialist of digital business models to share access to and valorise audiovisual (AV) content from their collections for research purposes in a wide range of social sciences (sociology, anthropology, urban planning, etc). The project revolves around cities in European history and identity. A huge quantity of fictional and non-fictional AV works (from the end of the 19th century onwards) in their collections describe cities in all aspects, including physical transformation and social dynamics. Such material could prove of enormous value to scholars in different fields of study. I-Media-Cities plans integration and technical development work to push interoperability among 9 archives and generate two types of e-environments to be used by researchers and innovators for research and other creative purposes. This will allow new approaches to research in social sciences and unleash creativity, in new forms of delivery and consumption of that content which the creative industry would be able to propose for instance in tourism or in the cultural economy. To make that possible, the project relies on collaboration among three main components: a) FHI (Film Holding Institutions); b) research institutions in different areas of social sciences; c) expertise in exploitation processes of digital content. At the end of the project, we will deliver a digital content access platform (interoperable and multilingual), made available to a growing community of researchers and creatives Europe-wide to push the boundaries of what we can learn, through AV material on cities, on European history and identity. The legacy of I-Media-Cities will be a new model for research on digital sources (applicable also to other subject areas), plus appropriate exploitation plans to consolidate and expand the platform into the European reference initiative on AV digital content.

A huge percentage of the recent European cultural heritage (CH) can be found in movies, photographies, posters and slides produced between 1895 and 1970 were made using cellulose derivates. More than 75 years of visual and audio memories are in serious danger to be lost due to the natural instability cellulose acetate (CA) and Cellulose nitrate (CN) materials. These physical media have helped to preserve the cultural material that is a real witness of socio-cultural European evolution in the recent era. It encompasses the possibility to understand the development of new arts such as cinema, photography or graphic arts and also the preservation of the socio-cultural memories of citizens located in major and local museums worldwide. Conservators consider two approaches when planning treatments to extend the useful lifetime of cultural materials: preventive or passive and active or interventive. But in case of cellulose derivates and other components of the movie or photos, once initiated, degradation cannot be prevented, reversed or stopped, but only inhibited or slowed. Inhibitive conservation of cellulose derivates can either involve the removal or reduction of factors causing degradation including light, oxygen, acids, fungus and relative humidity among others, as well as cost-sensitive processes such as freeze. NEMOSINE improves the traditional storage solutions, such as freeze storage (below 5ºC), by developing an innovative package with the main goal of energy saving and extent conservation time. NEMOSINE will develop: i) High O2 barrier and Active packaging using non-odour additives, ii) Active acid adsorbers based on functionalized Metal Organic Framework (MOFs) integrated in innovative structures, iii) Gas detection sensors to monitoring AA, O2 & NO, iv) Multi-scale modelling to correlate degradation & sensors signals, v)Packaging with modular design to fulfil the technical & economical requirements of the different CH made by cellulose derivates.