MediaFutures

MediaFutures is an H2020 project whose main goal is building a European data innovation hub, including funding, mentoring, and support for entrepreneurial and creative projects to reshape the media value chain through responsible, innovative uses of data.

The projects aims to: (a) explore the critical factors that impact how people engage with bottom-up quality journalism, science education and digital citizenship; (b) define a participatory, inclusive innovation programme, leveraging impulses from multiple disciplines, as well as synergies between entrepreneurs and creatives; (c) organise a competition addressing pressing technical, economic and societal challenges in the media value chain to identify promising digital entrepreneurs, creatives and data-empowered solutions; (d) provide data and experimentation facilities for the winners of this competition to test and nurture their ideas; (e)support 51 businesses and 43 artists by solving common concerns around funding and access to mentoring in technical, legal, business, media and sustainability matters; and (f) create toolkits and best practices for innovators, creatives, and other stakeholders to achieve greater traction for their citizen-centric initiatives, and empower them to communicate through data in inspiring, informative and engaging ways.

Our main contribution from Eurecat is to make a wide catalogue of open data resources and free open source technologies for data exploitation available. This includes datasets and tools for data collection, exploration and exploitation produced by the project's partners, as well as publicly available resources. Besides, we provide active support of non-technical aspects as well as experiment design and methodology to ensure valid and reliable results from the engagement with data from different sources including social media platforms, citizen science projects, open government and participative democracy platforms, etc.

The consortium is formed by the following partners: Zabala, Open Data Institute, University of Southampton, IRCAM, Eurecat, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Next Media Accelerator, LUISS, KU Leuven and Design Entrepreneurship Institute. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 innovation action programme under grant agreement No. 951962.

Updates

28/06/22 Launch 3rd Open call

2nd open call addressed to startups and artists. Seeking creative data-driven solutions on misinformation.

14-15/06/22 Plenary Meeting in London

In-person plenary meeting in London, where finally we meet physically with our partners. Intensive and very fruitful two days of work.

17-18/03/22 Plenary Meeting

Plenary meeting recapping on the work done during the last months and preparing the next months of work.

25/11/21 Launch 2nd Open call

2nd open call addressed to startups and artists. Seeking creative data-driven solutions on misinformation.

06/04/21 Welcome Meeting 1st Open Call Selected Projects

Welcome meeting for the selected projects in the 1st call of MediaFutures. START phase on acceleration program for start-ups and BUILD phase on residency program for artists.

01/04/21 Post on the MediaFutures blog

Blog post entitled "Data, tools and experimentation with artists and start-ups" about our last contributions and next steps on MediaFutures

11-12/03/21 1st Plenary Meeting

Plenary meeting recapping on the work done during the last 6 months and preparing the next months of work focused on acceleration and residency programs with selected projects.

01/02/21 Review of "Artist for media" track

The process of reviewing the applications on "Artist for Media" track starts. During the next two weeks, we will review the applications of artists or artistic companies, and selecting the best projects that use data as an art material to explore new ideas and technology to question its impact on individuals and society.

28/01/21 1st Open Call closed

The 1st Open Call is closed with more than 100 aplicants in the three different tracks: Artist for Media, Startups for Citizens and Startup meets Artist.

23/11/20 1st Open Call

1st open call addressed to startups and artists. Seeking creative data-driven solutions on communication, science, and democracy around misinformation and coronavirus.

07/09/20 Kick-off

Kicking-off MediaFutures virtually for two days, September 7th and 8th, with a meeting organized by the projects' coordinators, the colleagues from Leibniz Universität Hannover (LUH). During the first day we met all partners involved and the main contributions of each one in the project, which has a duration of three years, until September 2023. During the second day, we had the opportunity to listen an inspiring talk of Aurélie Delater who presented the S+T+ARTS ecosystem.