EAVE Core Values

Since its creation, EAVE – European Audiovisual Entrepreneurs – has trained over 2,600 producers in Europe and worldwide to cope with the challenges of an ever-changing industry and become part of a unique and thriving professional network. We are proud to share with you our guiding principles and core values to express the essence of EAVE in terms of Identity, vision and methodology.

IDENTITY

EAVE is one of the longest running and most successful training workshops under the Creative Europe umbrella. We empower producers and professionals in the audio-visual field, help their projects, companies, and the industry itself evolve, and facilitate the creation of networks of experience, opportunity, and partnership. Continuous innovation and renewal of the programme content and methodology is part of EAVE’s DNA and EAVE has been a benchmark for audio-visual training from its inception.

EAVE focuses on people over projects, mind over matter. We train producers of the future, committed to shaping and influencing the business. Roughly half of the participants attend the workshop with projects, while the rest focus on careers or companies. The mix of project and career participants and the inclusion of other industry professionals in key roles enhances the workshop experience and the overall impact of EAVE on the industry.  We base the selection of participants every year not primarily on individual merits, but on an overall dedication to achieving a collective pool of people and projects, ideas and experiences, which will in itself enrich the entire workshop experience through added peer to peer learning.

EAVE embraces and promotes diversity and inclusion in all aspects, not just in terms of age, gender, ethnicity, cultural and socio-economic backgrounds, but also with regards to creative approach, projects, formats, genres, as well as production processes, distribution methods, and business models. We encourage social responsibility, anti-racism, and green agendas in the workflow and on screen in recognition of the power of mass media.  More than half of EAVE’s participants are women, and we encourage BIPOC-candidates as well as citizens from countries outside the Creative Europe area as participants, experts, and team members. We believe that social and ethnic coherence in a global context requires equal representation, access, and funding and we encourage professionals to cooperate across borders and become active members of the EAVE ‘family’ for long-term inspiration and support. 

We use the participants’ projects that are developed during a workshop cycle as real-life ‘case studies’, but our success criteria are not linked to any single project. Instead we focus on participants becoming and remaining distinct voices with sustainable businesses who actively engage in strengthening and innovating audiovisual storytelling. We measure our success on the extent to which our core values and visions are represented and disseminated by present and former EAVE participants and experts, and on their contribution to the industry, whether in the shape of outstanding content, leading companies, or through taking on other key roles.

VISION 

THE EAVE FAMILY consists of forward-thinking professionals who turn threats into opportunities and embrace the future of the business. They adapt to the ever-changing media landscape, and are themselves agents of change. They are not dependent on the concept of a “comfort zone”, but constantly ask themselves the necessary questions to sustain today’s industry and help build tomorrow’s. With social responsibility as the foundation, questions include:

• how to embrace and develop new content formats that will capture and build audiences how to find, develop and manage high-quality projects
• how to embrace new models of distribution that are financially viable and
• how to strategize and build sustainable companies in an ever-changing marketplace with a volatile economy.

EAVE GRADUATES have significant visibility and their projects are often selected and awarded at prominent events and festivals.  EAVE graduates are key figures in their local and/or the global industry in a variety of different key roles, from high profile producers to initiators or leaders of regional, national and pan-national film funds, festivals, co-production markets, platforms, and more.  EAVE graduates are active in shaping the industry and participate in policy building - regionally, nationally and across borders.

EAVE producers are highly creative and talented professionals who conceive projects with an international outlook and choose subjects with purpose, while also developing tomorrow’s business models. They implement development policies and plan strategically to reduce risk and enhance company sustainability. They actively accompany their directors and writers on their creative journey and engage in high-level conversations about content, based on mutual respect. They take an active role in designing the production process and help shape the packaging of a film vis-à-vis the audience and act as connecting bridges between content and audiences. EAVE producers understand that content, finance, and marketing are indivisible and require producer-driven coherence, as well as a collaborative producer-director effort, with an aim to achieve excellent and relevant stories, making for healthy cultural industries. 

The vast EAVE Network unites producers globally and serves as a ’credibility trademark’.  Through a very active exchange of information the network helps define more effectively different kind of resources and opportunities around the globe.

METHODOLOGY

MULTI-DISCIPLINARY EXCHANGE of knowledge and ideas is a core principle which participants are encouraged to continue in their professional lives.  We apply new tools, technologies, and methodologies to the workshops.  EAVE workshops are designed to deliver an inspirational energy boost, while at the same time offering a reality check, where hard questions are asked. The quest for answers is supported by the totality of experience represented by participants and experts alike, and never dictated.

EAVEs hands-on, inclusive and horizontal approach offers participants a host of skills, tools, and insights, and may at the same time be seen as a form of ‘professional therapy’, where producers boost their awareness of who they are or want to become as producers, and how to achieve that. In order to facilitate this, EAVE offers a ‘safe’ and non-competitive environment, based on discretion, honesty, and solidarity, while simultaneously providing participants with a wide network of friends and potential partners.

THE PEDAGOGICAL TEAM and guest experts are all active industry professionals who on a daily basis share the same reality as the participants or bring insights from other industries. They are generous and curious people prepared to reflect on and share their own experience while also listening to, and learning from, each other and the participants. We welcome examples of success and failure alike. Invited case studies are asked to present both the good and the bad. We are not interested in glossed-over fairytales, but want real life, hands-on experience, dos and donts, inspiration, methods, and advice.  We build on the present in order to prepare for - and be part of shaping - the future.  

EAVE seeks to be an incubator of growth and creativity by bringing together producers from many backgrounds and nationalities with a multitude of professionals from the industry and beyond, resulting in a rare richness of feedback, perspectives, and advice available to each participant and each project from peers and experts alike. All meetings take place in an atmosphere of openness to ‘the other’, based on empathy and respect, inviting an honest exchange of experiences and perspectives in order to create a climate of inspiration and thinking out of the box.    The method consolidates the creation of a network of friends, colleagues, and future partners for long-term working relationships.

KNOWLEDGE SHARING leads to progress and EAVE is a community committed to sharing experience and expertise in order to sustain and transform the business - or even society itself – in a collaborative effort. EAVE actively partners or collaborates with a large number of other training programmes, institutions, festivals, and co-production markets for knowledge exchange and additional networking opportunities. Several EAVE PRODUCERS and EAVE ON DEMAND workshops, as well as other training events and learning platforms are created or hosted by EAVE alumni. New tutors and experts constantly emerge from the pool of past participants and knowledge spreads globally through the members of the community, via both  ’original’, tailor-made, and ‘inspired by’ workshops.

Page last updated 29 February 2024