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In the context of an increased global competition in the audiovisual sector, European cross-border cooperation in scriptwriting is crucial to allow the scale-up of European players and to face the increasing risk of ‘brain-drain’ of European audiovisual professionals.
This call for proposals will encourage the emergence of strong teams of creators (e.g. screenwriters, showrunners, other authors, etc.) from several Member States, therefore stimulating the creation of stories that reflect the diversity of the European culture.
Objectives
The purpose of this call for proposal is to support the European audiovisual industry to develop excellence in creating and writing high-quality drama content and foster innovative storytelling. It aims to promote co-writing practices, thereby also enlarging the experience of creative talents working on fiction series and offering them continuous opportunities through their career.
Themes and priorities
Applicants are invited to set up creative hubs that can achieve the above objectives, following the following priorities:
- Improve the knowledge and capacity of creative talents in the creation of fiction series and foster the emergence of strong teams/hubs of European creative talents (e.g. scriptwriters, editors, showrunners, producers) coming from diverse backgrounds and nationalities;
- Facilitate collaborations that follow a learning-by-doing approach, enabling creative talents to work on a set of different projects in parallel;
- Identify and implement working methods for co-writing, from the conceptualisation and early stage of storytelling, to matchmaking with potential buyers;
- Enhance the talents’ understanding of the market trends and dynamics by ensuring contacts with industry leaders, producers or commissioners of audiovisual works (e.g. distributors, buyers, platforms, broadcasters);
- Scout and select talents, for instance through open calls or prizes;
- Enhance the use of innovative technologies and market intelligence that can affect the creative process and intellectual property rights management to help secure creative autonomy and fair remuneration of creators.
Activities that can be funded
Support will be given to projects that facilitate creative hubs, such as writing rooms or other collaborative settings, aimed at the co-creation of European audiovisual works. Such hubs will act as accelerators or incubators of talents, by proposing innovative methods to select and guide talented writers from pre-writing/conceptualisation to the actual writing of fiction series projects and potential matchmaking with buyers.
The projects should involve European talents as directly as possible and empower them to intensify their cooperation. Authors should be working within ad hoc creative labs or writing rooms that have as primary goal the improvement of the creative process. At the same time, through exchanges with audiovisual professionals, authors should become more aware of the potential of their creative input, in artistic as well as in exploitation and dissemination terms.
A list of types of activities that are eligible can be found in the Call document.
Potential beneficiaries include production companies, film funding agencies, networks or groupings of audiovisual creatives or entities supporting creative talent, such as creative labs, training organisations, broadcasters, video on demand (VOD) platforms and international markets. Applicants must be based in one of the EU Member States.
The maximum co-financing rate of is 70% of the total eligible costs.