LUCA School of Arts (Brussels, Belgium) is the only university college in Flanders exclusively dedicated to art and design. Catering to over 3,000 students, LUCA offers more than 30 programs in Audio visual Arts & Techniques, Interior & Product Design, Construction, Music & Drama, and Visual Arts & Design in Undergrad BA degrees, MA degrees, and advanced master’s degrees. LUCA’s research practice is composed of interdisciplinary teams, including designers, (media) artists, engineers, social and cultural scientists, psychologists, and philosophers. They are intensely engaged with the potential “users” and “audiences” of their research and practice, involving them as participants in their projects.

LU Lusófona University (Lisbon, Portugal) is the leading institution in both Film and Media education in Portugal. Its teaching staff is composed of renowned filmmakers, archivists, and scholars, offering both in-depth technical and theoretical education. Its educational offer includes national courses in Film Studies, Film Production, and Media Arts, spanning from bachelor’s level to PhD, as well as three Erasmus Mundus Joint Master’s Degrees, namely, DocNomads, KinoEyes, and Re:Anima. In 2021, Universidade Lusófona introduced Portugal’s first accredited master’s course in Film Heritage, counting with the collaboration of the Cinemateca Portuguesa (Portuguese Cinematheque) and the National Archive of the Moving Image (ANIM). The education the institution provides includes both material and immaterial audiovisual production and offers in-depth knowledge and practices concerning analogue and digital technology, contributing towards new skills for the future of European film culture and heritage.

IADT (Dublin, Ireland) has a long-standing reputation as Ireland’s centre of excellence for education and training in film, animation, broadcasting, and the screen arts. IADT and its National Film School (NFS) specializes in all aspects of film and television research and production – from ideation through to the final delivery of the creative project. IADT has developed inter-disciplinary and cross-disciplinary approaches to teaching, learning, and research. This results in a wealth of expertise among academic staff in theory and practice, which filters through to research and production, and back to the classroom in the form of innovative pedagogical approaches to the screen arts. The Institute currently offers courses in Film & TV Production, Sound, Animation, and Design for Screen. Post-graduate courses include Broadcast Production, 3D Animation, Screenwriting, Creative Production & Screen Finance, Masters by Research, and an EMJM in Cinematography (VIEWFINDER) and Film (KINOEYES).

BFM (Tallinn, Estonia) is the largest university of humanities in Tallinn and the third biggest public university in Estonia. The University has almost 7,000 students (with 9.5% of them international), and about 950 employees, including nearly 400 researchers and lecturers from which 13% are from other countries. The implementing unit of the project is the Baltic Film, Media and Arts School (BFM), which is a competence center for communication and audio-visual knowledge and expertise, and also is hosting the Centre of Excellence in Media Innovation and Digital Culture. At BFM, students obtain a broad-based education in an international environment. Our study programs offer tools and skills for working in various positions in film production, TV, new media, communication, choreography, art, and music.

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The rationale for the composition of the consortium chiefly resides in the complementarity of the partners:

LUCA School of Arts has teachers with film history expertise and has a rich tradition of educating students of documentary and creative filmmaking. This makes this HEI the ideal starting place for the first semester, where foundational knowledge is provided (film history, film heritage, film cultures) and where students learn to create audio-visual essays on those topics. LU Lusófona University has a master's degree (in Portuguese language) in film preservation and restoration and is therefore ideally suited to delivery of the second semester, which will go deeper into those themes. As well as fiction and non-fiction modes of filmmaking, IADT has particular expertise in animated film and documentary. This makes the institution ideally suited to host the third semester, which focuses on working with found footage. The Irish film industry has been a favourite hub for Hollywood and other international filmmakers for decades. Therefore, the tension between international co-productions and national audio-visual heritage will be a particular focus of this semester. BFM has internationally renowned expertise in cultural data analytics, network science and computational social sciences. This kind of expertise is indispensable for those who want to work at a higher level in the sectors our graduates will enter. BFM is therefore very prominent in each of the first three semesters, where BFM staff members will each take the "Film data analytics and management" course component (which deepens in content each semester).

The four HEIs jointly supervise the entire curriculum and are also jointly responsible for organising the fourth semester, where students are spread across the four countries and educational institutions.

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