WHAT WE DO

Culture Agora, our multilingual free-accessible platform dedicated to arts, culture and creative industries, was certainly our largest long-term project. From 2013 until 2023, the user-friendly online meeting space created visibility and encouraged connectivity for creatives and organisations within the cultural and creative industries who are often isolated and distant from useful information on the latest opportunities for them. Culture Agora was probably the largest and most updated collection of information and opportunities on what’s happening in the creative industries in Europe and the Southern Mediterranean.

https://culture-media.eu/culture-agora/

Butterfly is co-funded by the Creative Europe programme. This project aims to create a new attitude in theatre and opera houses towards sustainability by exploring new green practices related to opera production and circulation.

The main activities of this project are the co-creation and co-production of a sustainable opera from the opera commission to the public attendance and the sharing of the sustainable practices experimented.

ECHO Academies is the continuation of ECHO I, ECHO II, and ECHO III. ECHO is an art project that aims to foster young and emerging European talents in the fields of comics, fashion design, music, photography and architecture by using heritage as a means and inspiration for their work. It is the result of the collaboration between Inter Alia, Open Space Foundation, Association for Sustainable Development Sfera IN, Pro Progressione, and CUMEDIAE. CUMEDIAE will provide expertise in promoting the artists and their work on the European and international levels.

Composed of distinguished partners such as Khora, Les Anneaux de la Mémoire, Pro Progressione and Gerador, CUMEDIAE has been entrusted to participate in the project called “MANIFEST: New artistic perspectives on memories of the transatlantic trade of enslaved people”. This project aims to contribute to and enhance the re-imagination of Europe’s collective memory of the transatlantic trade of enslaved people.

A consortium formed by B&S Europe with CUMEDIAE and KEA has been entrusted by the European Commission DG for International Partnerships (INTPA – formerly DG DEVCO) to deliver the second phase of the Culture Advisory Services (CAS II) initiative. The advisory and capacity building services will support the development of EU culture actions in international relations.

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DigiTraining is specifically targeted to benefit small or midsize museums, as well as other tangible or intangible cultural heritage organisations, which have a physical structure and facilities accessible to the general public. The project, that runs until July 2022, responds to the urgent need for providing specific support to the cultural and creative heritage sector in a challenging environment.

CUMEDIAE joined a consortium of well-respected social and economic research institutes, cultural managers and creative workers from six European countries, led by the University of Turku (Finland), in a three year long research project intended to reshape the economic and social perception of the Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs). The DISCE Project (acronym for Developing Inclusive & Sustainable Creative Economies), funded by the European Commission under the Horizon2020 Programme, aims to reassess the role of CCIs as contributors to growth, quality employment, competitiveness, and to the attractiveness and social cohesion of cities and regions across the EU.

CUMEDIAE as part of a 2-year research project provides deep knowledge of the cultural and creative sector, ensuring the implementation of strategic communication and engaging as needed with stakeholders in support of the research activities to facilitate the elaboration of a new statistical framework to measure the Cultural and Creative Sector in the EU. The work, expected to have a long term impact across the whole cultural and creative sectors in Europe, has been entrusted by the DG Education and Culture of the European Commission to a combination of experts in economic and social research and in cultural and creative industries.

CUMEDIAE was involved in raising awareness about European Jewish Heritage through the Creative Europe cross-border project “Parallel Traces: A new lens on Jewish Heritage.” Parallel Traces, which interacted with content and heritage in an innovative, open and plural way, offers an opportunity to unearth the traces of the Jewish cultural heritage in urban architecture and planning from the perspective of discovery by European citizens, bringing essentially a visual viewpoint. A pan-European photography contest, several exhibitions, a new app… We had so much fun with this initiative.

The project discovered and rethought the European Jewish Heritage as an integral part of European history through different mechanisms: a call for artists, off-line and online communication activities addressed in particular but not only to the areas of influence of our local partners, and at the development of a new app. A pan-European call, opened to creative people throughout Europe, but focused on participating localities represented by local partners of the consortium, provided an opportunity for the creation of original digital photographic and audiovisual artwork based on clearly defined criteria ensuring the consistency between the artwork and the project’s objectives. This original digital artwork related to Jewish heritage will represented valuable artistic material and, presented in specific exhibitions, which benefitted from strong cross border visibility, thus contributing in a very concrete manner to the transnational circulation of cultural and creative works.
Consortium Partners: European Association for the Preservation and Promotion of Jewish Culture and Heritage (AEPJ) (Project Leader, Luxembourg), Culture and Media Agency Europe aisbl (CUMEDIAE) (Brussels, Belgium), Imascono Art S.L. (Imascono) (Zaragoza, Spain), Patronat Call de Girona  (Girona, Spain), Tacka Kommukacije (Belgrade, Serbia), Tarbut Foundation (Sighet/Cluj, Romania), Bente Kahan Foundation (Wroclaw, Poland), Israeli House (Tbilisi, Georgia).

CUMEDIAE contributed to the promotion of gender equality and cultural diversity in the Southern-Mediterranean region with a project dedicated to enhancing the image of women in the broadcasting and cinema sectors. This EU-funded initiative worked in seven target countries (Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine and Tunisia) and was executed together with the following partners: Interarts (Project leader, Spain), COPEAM (Italy), ESAC-École Supérieure de l’Audiovisuel et du Cinéma de Gammarth (Tunisia), SIB- Screen Institute Beirut Association (Lebanon) and the European Women’s Audiovisual Network (as an associated partner).

We can also be good at research and the writing of long reports. CUMEDIAE was requested by the China Institute for Cultural Trade Research and the National Institute of Cultural Development (Beijing) to produce a research presenting in detail the situation of cultural industries in Spain. The study is pending its translation in Chinese and its publication in book format in China. The study is coordinated by Ignasi Guardans, and involved a researcher in Spain, Ms Paula Velasco, and the collaboration of Maggie Wen Xu, member of our Professional Network.

CUMEDIAE, as part of a consortium led by B&S Europe and including GAIA Heritage and Culture Lab, was awarded a contract to provide Culture Advisory Services to the European Commission (DG DEVCO).  In line with EU policies and guidelines, the consortium contributes to the adoption and implementation of appropriate and inclusive culture policies, systems and practices in developing countries, as supported by the EU in line with EU policies and guidelines. CUMEDIAE provides and coordinates its extensive network of professionals and its experience in knowledge sharing in the culture sector.

We love to help great initiatives to become as visible as possible. On the occasion of the inauguration of the Spanish artist Cristobal Gabarron’s art installation “Enlightened Universe” celebrating the 70th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Brussels, CUMEDIAE was tasked by The Gabarron Foundation with developing a full media and communications strategy. We implemented it and multiplied the visibility of the initiative, the artist, and the foundation amongst key stakeholders including those in media and in the world of the Cultural and Creative Industries.

CUMEDIAE provided its communication capabilities to the Visa for Music 2015, the most important professional market of Africa and Middle-East music, settled in Rabat (Morocco). We became its solid European Media Partner, and we built a communication strategy at the service of the market and each of its activities, mostly developed through Culture Agora and social networks.

The European Commission was interested in identifying and analysing the real situation regarding the use of audiovisual content in European schools, as well as the applicable legal framework and the opinions of the industry. And CUMEDIAE built up a consortium, and was entrusted to provide that European scale expertise. The resulting report based in two years of work included a complex presentation of best practices in the matter across the 28 Member States and some of its neighbours. We coordinated a consortium with the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, the European Think Tank on Film and Film Policy, The European Association of Teachers, and a respected researcher from London’s Queen Mary Intellectual Property Institution’s Network. The resulting study is still the object of analysis among experts across the continent.

At some point the European Parliament realised it was time to treat with better respect its art collection. The “valorisation of the European Parliament Art Collection” was one of our first awarded contracts, to support the EP in the expert art assessment of its own art collection with the aim not only of evaluating its current artistic value, but also developing a short-term and long-term strategy for its best management, curatorship and communication to the European citizens. For that purpose, we put together and led a highly qualified consortium of experts (with Spanish partner Expo Actual and Around Art), and at the end we delivered an excellent report to the full satisfaction of the Parliament, with its results still in full implementation.

We love the crossroads of culture and development. For that reason, we were happy to receive the task of a project funded by the EU Funded program ACP Cultures+, with the objective to develop and consolidate a viable and sustainable cultural industries in Mozambique, by reinforcing their contribution to social and economic development in technical support of the Government of Mozambique. Working along with the country’s Ministry of Culture and BASA (Business & Art South Africa), CUMEDIAE contributed with studies on the situation of copyright, the legal framework for private funding of culture, and the legal statute of artists.