The premiere of the vibrant live cinema performance European Souvenirs at De Balie in Amsterdam during ECF’s Imagining Europe event was a highlight of 2012 and it launched the network’s first joint project, Remapping Europe – A Remix Project. Universal concepts such as family, travel, borders and memory were the starting point for a journey that took the audience on a voyage of discovery. The performance was a great success, evoking debate about the role of archives, artistic freedom in contrast to documentation, sound in contrast to image and ‘Europeanness’. It was a collaborative multimedia project by artists Farah Rahman (The Netherlands), Karol Rakowski (Poland), Barış Gürsel (Turkey), Malaventura (Spain) and Noriko Okaku (Japan/UK).

For the third year, Doc Next@IDFA took place in November and brought fresh short documentaries by young European DIY media-makers to the big screen.

The Doc Next Network also:

• Produced 57 films, photographic projects and scouted 33 documentaries, political video remixes for the Doc Next Media Collection
• Organised 14 media-making workshops with 90 participants
• Organised 13 Doc Next programmes with more than 25 film screenings for more than 200,000 viewers
• Gave four documentary bursaries
• Published four calls for work
• Held three pitching sessions for new works
• Organised six trainings and seminars with more than 50 participants
• Organised four knowledge sharing meetings
• Partnered with over 30 festivals, universities, cultural and social organisations and companies
• Engaged thousands of young media-makers, researchers, educators and arts, cultural programmers and policy-makers in their social media platforms
• Developed one expanded education methodology
• Launched four local sustainable Doc Next media labs
• Developed a methodology for working across sectors, with local immigrant organisations
• Kicked off the joint two-year project Remapping Europe – a Remix Project with the live cinema performance European Souvenirs in Vienna, Amsterdam and Bilbao, with funding from the European Commission’s Culture programme.

We also communicated about the process and methodology of the Doc Next Network.

The Doc Next Network had good press and media coverage including in Dutch weekly De Groene Amsterdammer in September and an article in Dutch Vogue on Doc Next@IDFA in November – as well as 45 online articles on network’s activities. ECF Programme Manager Vivian Paulissen was also interviewed about European Souvenirs in April on Radio Kanal Barcelona.

We succeeded in getting the message out to new audiences through our social media networks, with a growth of 72% on Facebook, and 120,000 views on www.docnextnetwork.org.

The Doc Next Network partners also developed a dedicated website for the European Souvenirs project with ongoing documentation of artistic process and development.

We produced a new Doc Next Network trailer that was shared on the Doc Next Network’s Vimeo channel. During IDFA, a catalogue and DVD of Doc Next@IDFA 2012 was made available to festival-goers, which played host to more than 2,000 professionals including broadcasters, producers and festival directors from all over the world. Promotional postcards and stickers and gadgets (European Souvenirs) were handed out at events throughout the year.

Experimenting with and trying out different models of operation, as well as finding a shared lexicon in cross-cultural collaboration, is key. This will help to overcome inevitable local or specific financial and operational challenges that the respective organisations have to deal with in their daily work.

One of the major challenges facing an ambitious networked collaboration like Doc Next Network is the number of projects that are developed by a number of international organisations within a limited timeframe. One consideration needs to be the network’s organisational structure and responsibilities and whether these are able to support a successful joint communication and representation strategy.

The network will also focus on achieving sustainability by:

• Working across sectors with non-cultural organisations
• Reaching out to different communities, including (im)migrant local communities
• Attracting new partners to use the media collection
• Diversifying funding sources
• Engaging in an advocacy agenda related to “expanded education, media and society in Europe”.

In 2012, we received:
-       281 eligible applications under the Collaboration Grants scheme of which 14 have been awarded (total budget spent: €299,830)
-       64 eligible applications under the BIFC grant scheme, of which 12 have been awarded (total budget spent: €244,838)
-       659 eligible applications for STEP Beyond Travel Grants, of which 239 applicants from 42 countries  have been awarded (total budget spent: €105,050).

For more detailed information of the supported projects and individuals in 2012, please see the grants booklet.

Many of the applications we received under these grants schemes confirmed the emergence of new creative movements that are looking at artistic or cultural ways to re-invigorate European democracy. This has directly influenced ECF’s overall strategic developments, including new Collaboration Grants guidelines for 2013. 

In 2012, ECF and our funding partner Open Society Foundations (OSF) started the process of moving the BIFC to the Balkan region. Both organisations believe the time is right for the Western Balkans to take full ownership of this fund. A call for organisations to take over the fund was launched in summer 2012, followed by a selection process that was concluded in the autumn. We are happy to announce Balkan-based ArtAngle as the new BIFC managing organisation.

In September 2012, the STEP Beyond Lab was launched as the first externally facing ECF Lab. This new digital tool allows users to become part of an online community where they can apply for a STEP Beyond Travel Grant and track its progress, share information about their projects and get in touch with their peers from all over Europe. The Lab also allows ECF’s internal administration to process STEP Beyond applications and to monitor these more efficiently.

In 2012, various special activities brought our grants to a wider audience: a special photographic exhibition on STEP Beyond grantees was shown at the ECF Princess Margriet Award and Imagining Europe event; a competition was organised to enable five young Europeans to attend the Imagining Europe event; and we organised grant-writing training events in  Kosovo and Albania, which as a result doubled the number of applications received from that region.   

John Akomfrah at Imagining Europe. Photo: Jan Boeve

ECF invites nominations from a distinguished network of experts across Europe. These nominators are professionals from different regions, disciplines and areas of cultural practice, extending beyond ECF’s own sphere of influence.

In 2012, laureate John Akomfrah was chosen by the independent international jury for his ground-breaking film oeuvre woven from perspectives that are often hidden from the mainstream narratives of European history; the other laureate Charles Esche, Director of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, was chosen for his exceptional leadership in rethinking centres and museums of art as public spaces so that they show us the power and value of art in engaging with the contemporary world. Together these two laureates present the complementarity of practice and reflection.

This fourth edition of the Award aimed to:

• Create opportunities for the laureates’ work and ideas to be part of the award ceremony and in a public programme later in the year
• Bring to the fore the message that there is an urgently needed balance between the domains of culture, economics and politics, and that all three pillars have a key responsibility in constructing a new horizon of democracy – a responsibility that resounds in all aspects of ECF’s work. This message was key to the Imagining Europe event held in October, as well as for all of ECF’s advocacy work, which emphasises the value of culture as a key contributor to the European project
• Attract a wider audience from the EU, Belgium and the Netherlands, combining the political and cultural sectors. Research was undertaken into expanding the ECF audience, which resulted in more people than ever attending the Princess Margriet Award ceremony, which is now a keenly anticipated event in the Brussels calendar

In 2012 we were able to integrate the two laureates into our activities and programmes throughout the year, with far-reaching impact. Charles Esche spoke in the Dutch parliament when the cultural budget for the EU was discussed. He also attended the Beyond Markets: culture and creative industries in EU’s external relations debate organised by ECF in September and he gave the keynote speech during Imagining Europe’s debate on reclaiming public space – exploring alternative models for democratic practice. Laureate John Akomfrah also entered into debate on Europe’s future at Imagining Europe with writer and publicist Abdelkader Benali. This gave him the opportunity to show his work and to discuss how moving image culture has been essential for him in addressing issues such as identity and belonging – a key theme for us during the year. ECF also commissioned Akomfrah to create an art work ‘Peripeteia’, which premiered during the Award ceremony in March.

Jury members for the 5^th edition were:

• Jan Dibbets, Artist, Amsterdam
• Christian Esch, Director, NRW Kultursekretariat, Wuppertal
• Maria Lind, Director, Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm
• Els van der Plas, General Director, Muziektheater, Amsterdam
• Rana Zincir Celal, General Secretary, Board of Directors: Home for Cooperation, Nicosia.

• Inspire – through surprising and spot-on programming
• Engage – involving the audience through on- and offline actions and debate
• Empower – through strong artistic work and messages, empower people to think and act differently.

Proving that there is no such thing as ‘the’ European debate, discussions at the event touched on a range of issues: Europe’s role in climate change and how it relates to arts, culture and society; the humanitarian catastrophe in Syria; new forms of democracy initiated from the bottom up; the political situation in Belarus; the collective and personal imagery of immigration.

More than 1,000 visitors attended the Imagining Europe event in person and around 15,000 visitors were reached through online activities and social media. We received extensive press coverage, which succeeded in raising our profile in the Netherlands (see below). And we struck up new partnerships with a number of cultural venues and organisations, such as De Balie, Stadsschouwburg Theatre Amsterdam, Musicican’s center MuziQ, the Conservatorium, and Amsterdam Fund for the Arts.

Expected or realised spin-offs:

• For Imagining Europe, we brought together Syrian clarinetist Kinan Azmeh and Dutch trumpeter Eric Vloeimans; this proved to be a successful collaboration that will expand far beyond the life of the event and continue to touch large audiences.
• Belarus Free Theatre’s Trash Cuisine premiered at a sold-out Stadsschouwburg Theatre Amsterdam, which led to other theatres expressing interest in presenting the work. Significant press coverage of the company and the situation in Belarus sparked debate and increased public information and awareness.
• The vibrant live cinema performance European Souvenirs that was created for Imagining Europe by ECF’s Doc Next Network partners will be touring across Europe and a new version is planned for spring 2014.

The event received unprecedented press coverage for ECF, with a total of 58 articles/interviews appearing in the press and media (2 television, 10 print, 10 radio, 36 online) in Dutch, English, Spanish, Swedish and Russian.

Highlights included articles on Belarus Free Theatre in Vrij Nederland and De Volkskrant and an item on NOS Radio 1 Journaal; an interview with ECF Director Katherine Watson in NRC Handelsblad; a live television interview with keynote speaker Amitav Ghosh at Buitenhof (a Dutch political interview programme broadcast on Nederland 1 on Sunday mornings); and a radio interview with performers Kinan Azmeh and Eric Vloeimans on Radio 6.

For the full press coverage or media analysis of the Imagining Europe event, please download the press clippings (pdf) or media analysis (pdf).

Following the event, we sent out both online and offline mailings to all attendees and invitees with visual summaries, audio clips and video coverage, with a view to nurturing a strong audience base for future activities and events.