MediaFutures will set up a virtual, European data innovation hub, including funding, mentoring and support for entrepreneurial and creative projects to reshape the media value chain through responsible, innovative uses of data. We will: • explore the critical factors that impact how people engage with bottom-up quality journalism, science education and digital citizenship; • define a participatory, inclusive innovation programme, leveraging impulses from multiple disciplines, as well as synergies between entrepreneurs and creatives; • organise a competition addressing pressing technical, economic and societal challenges in the media value chain to identify promising digital entrepreneurs, creatives and data-empowered solutions; • provide data and experimentation facilities for the winners of this competition to test and nurture their ideas; • support 51 businesses and 43 artists by solving common concerns around funding and access to mentoring in technical, legal, business, media and sustainability matters; and • create toolkits and best practices for innovators, creatives, and other stakeholders to achieve greater traction for their citizen-centric initiatives, and empower them to communicate through data in inspiring, informative and engaging ways. Drawing on the experience of the consortium - ZABALA, ODI and SOTON (instrumental to delivering several flagship Horizon 2020 data incubators); IRCAM (leading the way in publicly funded art-tech-science residencies programmes); EUT and LUH (2 accomplished DIHs and BDVA i-Spaces); NMA (Europe’s largest media accelerator); LUISS (renowned school of journalism and digital startup accelerator); KU Leuven (legal and ethical expert) and DEN (one of Europe’s social innovation pioneers) - we will establish a Europe-wide, virtual data-driven innovation ecosystem, supported and promoted by an international network of 28 organisations that have confirmed their intention to join MediaFutures as members of our stakeholder cluster.

STADIEM’s ambition is to boost the opportunities and foster the success of European media startups by the creation and deployment of cross border, innovation to market startup growth, development and piloting program between startups, innovation Hubs and other actors. As such STADIEM aims to solve the three key pain points in European media sector: cross border scalability, startup to corporate to market tech transfer, and availability of innovative media services in a Digital Single Market framework. STADIEM intends to break barriers in Europe, fostering stronger visibility and opportunities for startups active in the media industry. The main approach is to create a powerful network of media sandboxes and accelerators that foster the development and scale-up of future media solutions, with a focus on the integration of emerging technologies such as 5G, Cloud, IoT, VR, AR and beyond, smart objects, wearables, data analytics, AI, ... Individual objectives of the project include: Setting up a cross-border community of ecosystems that brings together four innovation hubs focused on media acceleration and achieve seamless collaboration between the hubs and their ecosystems. Develop a cross-border European market-driven media-tech framework and tools focusing on innovation product to market approach including piloting of innovative services with corporate stakeholders Open Innovation matchmaking, including launching two open calls for startups to join the 4-stage programme. Create synergies with relevant activities in Europe and worldwide, with the objective to foster awareness, and to offer improved services to startups and scaleups within the network. Create a sustainable ecosystem for startups in media and creative industries. The consortium consists of 4 media innovation hubs in Europe: VRT, Media City Bergen, StoryTek and NMA; which are reinforced by 3 strong players in community building and dissemination Martel Innovate, EBU and F6S.