AKCIJA Sarajevo is looking for partners, e g. film education organizations or institutions, film academies, social media education organization with experience and network in (film) education for young people, to cooperate in a project “FIVE (Film Vloggers of Europe)” in the fields of vlogging, film literacy, film education, new media and social media. The partner search refers to the MEDIA Film Education 2018 call for proposal.

Organization: AKCIJA Sarajevo

AKCIJA Sarajevo is an independent cultural organization from Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina) that operates at the intersection of arts and politics. They perceive culture as a powerful vehicle for citizens’ mobilization, emancipation, and re-communing of public spaces. They deem artist a political subject who uses her or his work to address contemporary societal and political issues. By moderating dialogue and networking among various cultural protagonists, AKCIJA initiates social change by means of culture and arts, also utilizing research, networking and advocacy in order to transform the culture-related governmental policy. Their advocacy campaigns explore how non-artists – the ordinary citizens as cultural citizens – can appropriate artistic strategies for their own empowerment. Privileging people’s personal experience, they focus on human stories behind complex political and social issues, and re-articulate by means of the old and new media and art forms (photography, contemporary artworks).

Project: FIVE (Film Vloggers of Europe)

Drawing on the undeniable appeal of the video-blogging (vlogging) for the young people, the project FIVE (Film Vloggers of Europe) aims to tactically utilize this type of digital social media as a creative tool for informal education about the rich heritage of European cinema. This is to be achieved by means of a new joint cross-border film literacy initiative comprising academic sector, NGO organizations and the vlogger communities/initiatives. The project invites young video bloggers (vloggers) from the Western Balkans to appreciate European cinema and learn about it, and then, subsequently, to convey that appreciation and knowledge through their film-themed vlogs to their peer audience.

The project blends film education with audience development, and heavily relies on informal education and peer (cooperative) learning, where the young people are enticed to actively explore European, developing an informed yet intimate attachment to it. Some of them will do it by creating their own vlogs, whereas others will do it by watching these vlogs online. For this reason, the number of film-related vlogs and their audience remain the most reliable quantitative criterion in assessing the project.

The project activities follow a two-step knowledge transfer: 1) from the educators (teachers, scholars, filmmakers) to the already existing young vloggers; 2) from the educated vloggers (with an additional help – mentoring – of the educators) to the wider youth audience, that also includes prospective vloggers.

The activities include:
– mapping the young vloggers in the Western Balkans (15–19 years old), who have a penchant for cinema and would be willing to use it in order to develop film-related video-blogs,
– developing an education platform (program) for these vloggers, as well as for the prospective vloggers, by inviting the educators from all over Europe,
– enabling the vloggers from the different countries to exchange their experiences and film-related knowledge,
– helping the vloggers to produce the film vlogs inspired by the European films discussed at the lectures or chosen by the vloggers-participants on their own.

Contact: Nebojša Jovanović, film education coordinator
E: nebojsa.jovanovic@akcija.org.ba, info@akcija.org.ba
T: +38733223860, W: http://akcija.org.ba/