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 three years:
We are proud that we received many high-quality applications in three successful open calls and were able to support the selected teams – 51 startups and SMEs as well as 43 artists from 54 predominantly European countries – with a total of € 2.5 million. In the end, we were able to finance, train and otherwise support 25 SfC teams (Startup for Citizens), 27 SmA teams (Startup meets Artist) and 15 AfM teams (Artists for Media).
MediaFutures was an ambitious and challenging project. With great collaboration at the MediaFutures consortium level, we achieved and surpassed the objectives and KPIs set at the project’s start and thus successfully concluded our project. Through our acceleration programme, we have made a positive social, economic and scientific impact by providing financial support to a wide range of exceptional SMEs, startups and artists and offering them a bespoke training programme with everything from data and media scientists to creatives. Projects such as MediaFutures, delivered by a diverse consortium of experts, significantly contribute to fostering entrepreneurship and prosperity by providing the necessary means to explore and grow new ventures.
The MediaFutures team developed a toolkit as a resource for innovators, artists, and everyone working between business and arts. The toolkit focuses 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.
The MediaFutures Toolkit
We have successfully submitted all 39 deliverables, which were all approved and 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 vast audience of an 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 Startups and Artists”, we address various issues in the media and entrepreneurship spheres and provide recommendations for action for several stakeholders such as startup companies, artists, the European Commission itself, public institutions, among others.
The MediaFutures Policy Briefs
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 themes mentioned above. On our “Resources” site, we have posted various brief videos of our project members who shared their insights and experiences that they made during the MediaFutures project.
MediaFutures Interview on Lessons Learned
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.
Success Story Teams
Last but not least, in the project process, we concluded various workshops, plenaries and online and offline meetings. In particular, we organised a project-internal workshop on creating the MediaFutures Business Model Canvas. The results of this workshop can be seen in D6.2 – Exploitation Implementation.
The internal MediaFutures workshop, organised during the Plenary in Rome, 2023
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 completed it successfully.
