Operating with open innovation principles, ekip will establish a partner and network-driven policy recommendation engine to continuously drive the formulation and adoption of policy development recommendations for Europe’s Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs). This will result in support and guidance that strengthens the capacity for CCI-actors to engage in and contribute to complex innovation processes. The interplay between the projects activities will allow us to deliver two objectives – building the meta-network amongst ecosystems and developing the knowledge-based and participatory policy engine – which will come together in making the third objective – supporting the development for CCI-centered ecosystems – possible. The engine is designed to in three main phases (i.e. five steps) achieve this: -Assess needs for future R&I actions - List of defined policy areas together with a meta-network of networks covering all member states and the CCI diversity. -Mapping of needs CCIs; tech, invest, skill, regulation - Investigate prioritised policy areas looking broadly and across sectors, also focusing on recommendations that will (i) increase the CCIs’ readiness for green and digital transitions as well as for the rest of the economy and society. -Identify and propose key actions - Formulate policy recommendations, also giving practical guidelines of how to implement and track development in ecosystems. ekip brings together highly networked and diverse organisations with strong track-record in research, innovation, and policymaking for and with the CCIs. Beneficiaries from 12 countries with different social, cultural, and economic contexts. Leading universities with expertise on research and innovation in culture and creativity. Organisations with online data collection and analysis competences and visualisation skills. Specialised policy consulting companies and advisories will be linking practice, research, and innovation with policy development for the CCI.

Motivated by the challenges, risks and opportunities that the wide use of AI brings to media, society and politics, AI4Media aspires to become a centre of excellence and a wide network of researchers across Europe and beyond, with a focus on delivering the next generation of core AI advances to serve the key sector of Media, to make sure that the European values of ethical and trustworthy AI are embedded in future AI deployments, and to reimagine AI as a crucial beneficial enabling technology in the service of Society and Media. The AI4Media consortium, comprising 30 leading partners in the areas of AI and media (9 universities, 9 research centres, 12 industrial partners) and 35 associate members, will establish the networking infrastructure to bring together the currently fragmented European AI landscape in the field of media, and foster deeper and long-running interactions between academia and industry, including Digital Innovation Hubs. It will also shape a research agenda for media AI research, and implement research and innovation both with respect to cutting-edge technologies at the core of AI research, and within specific fields of media-related AI. AI4Media will provide a targeted funding framework through open calls, to speed up the uptake of innovations developed within the network. A PhD programme will further enhance links to the industry and the fostering and exchange of talent, while providing motivation to prevent brain drain, and a set of use cases will be developed by the network to demonstrate the impact of the achieved advances in the media sector. The Excellence Centre that is established during the AI4Media project, and the ecosystem that will grow around it, will provide a long-term basis for the support of AI excellence in Europe, long after the project end, with the aim of ensuring that Ethical AI guided by European values assumes a global leading role in the field of Media.

Europe urgently needs to restore and intensify its engagement with its past. Time Machine will give Europe the technology to strengthen its identity against globalisation, populism and increased social exclusion, by turning its history and cultural heritage into a living resource for co-creating its future. The Large Scale Research Initiative (LSRI) will develop a large-scale digitisation and computing infrastructure mapping millennia of European historical and geographical evolution, transforming kilometres of archives, large collections from museums and libraries, and geohistorical datasets into a distributed digital information system. To succeed, a series of fundamental breakthroughs are targeted in Artificial Intelligence and ICT, making Europe the leader in the extraction and analysis of Big Data of the Past. Time Machine will drive Social Sciences and Humanities toward larger problems, allowing new interpretative models to be built on a superior scale. It will bring a new era of open access to sources, where past and on-going research are open science. This constant flux of knowledge will have a profound effect on education, encouraging reflection on long trends and sharpening critical thinking, and will act as an economic motor for new professions, services and products, impacting key sectors of European economy, including ICT, creative industries and tourism, the development of Smart Cities and land use. The CSA will develop a full LSRI proposal around the Time Machine vision. Detailed roadmaps will be prepared, organised around science and technology, operational principles and infrastructure, exploitation avenues and framework conditions. A dissemination programme aims to further strengthen the rapidly growing ecosystem, currently counting 95 research institutions, most prestigious European cultural heritage associations, large enterprises and innovative SMEs, influential business and civil society associations, and international and national institutional bodies.

The “innovative methodS for Media & Information Literacy Education involving schools and librarieS” (SMILES) project will address the topic of media literacy and combating fake news in Europe, with a strong focus on digital media use and COVID-19. Following the rise of fake news and disinformation, fuelled by the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a strong urgency for the participating organisations to develop and test new methods for media and information literacy. Representing libraries, media literacy organisations and a research institute, the consortium is determined to contribute to a safer and more responsible use of digital technology, particularly amongst young people. The SMILES project aims to test innovative educational approaches in the form of fake news workshops at secondary schools held by school teachers and librarians, and monitor their effectiveness. The project method is to deploy a 'train the trainer' approach, in which school teachers and librarians are equipped with the necessary knowledge, skills and materials to deliver workshops to secondary school pupils (age 12-15). Concretely, 60 school teachers and librarians are trained in organising ‘fake news’ workshops to young people; and they will organise the workshops at secondary schools in Belgium, Spain and the Netherlands for 600 participating young people.In order to reach the overall objective to enhance the digital readiness of secondary schools and empower young people to critially use digital technology, the consortium will develop three Intellectual Outputs. A Baseline study will be conducted in the three countries to research and connect different educational approaches in Europe, enabling the development of a shared methodology on fake news workshops (intellectual output 1). Based on the results of intellectual output 1, the SMILES training programme to promote the safe and responsible use of digital media tools will be developed and deployed, including the production of a manual for trainers and a digital toolkit (intellectual output 2). Finally, the project partners will develop a report on the effectiveness of the workshops and tested methodology in the three countries (intellectual output 3). As part of the project, transnational meetings and dissemination activities will lead to a sharing of knowledge on the effectiveness of the fake news workshops between three European countries (Belgium, Spain and the Netherlands), as well as on a wider level through a dedicated dissemination plan. The ultimate goal of the project is to help create more awareness and trust of young people in the institutions that provide verified information - i.e. schools, libraries - and the essential role these institutes play in the information society.