EAVE Impact

EAVE IMPACT is the umbrella for innovative sessions / events / talks / think tanks / videos that EAVE organises beyond its core workshop programmes on topics relevant to the future of the film industry.

Explore the EAVE IMPACT activities:

EAVE IMPACT – the concept

EAVE programmes have a profound impact on the European independent industry as a whole by: 

• Empowering graduates to become agents of change and shape their local, regional and national communities.
• Supporting the professionalization of stakeholders across the value chain and their continued dialogue within a strong and supportive network. 
• Building bridges within Europe, while linking the European industry to global markets. 
• Promoting inclusion, diversity, gender equality, and mental health in the industry.
• Working to achieve a conscious, engaged and sustainable industry.
• Advocating for innovation, best practices, green policies and value-based systems and setting the benchmark for audio-visual training worldwide.

EAVE has been actively engaging in the overall transformation in the production sector: it has been a key player in promoting cross-border and cross-disciplinary collaboration since its inception in 1988, consistently empowering independent producers from around the world.

“At EAVE, we want to push our producers and ourselves to step out of our ‘comfort zone’, and constantly ask ourselves the necessary questions to sustain today’s industry and help build tomorrow’s.

These questions include how to embrace new content formats and develop the audio-visual narrative language, capture audiences, shape and embrace new models of financing and distribution, and last but not least, how to build sustainable companies.”

 Kristina Trapp, CEO of EAVE

To learn more, read EAVE Core Values!

 

EAVE WORKSHOPS – A SAFE SPACE FOR ALL

EAVE aims to create practices that make everyone participating at EAVE workshops feel safe. We wish to take responsibility of difficult situations and handle conflicts instead of tolerating them.

You have a right to an inclusive and safe environment and communication. You are responsible for your part of the safety of the space that you use with others.

Assuming and making generalizations

It is natural to make assumptions about other people, but it is important to acknowledge that and to listen and keep an open mind.

Don’t generalize your experiences to apply to others. Speak only on your experiences.

You cannot know about another person’s experience on moving in the world, their gender, sexuality, class background, life situation or identity. All differences are not visible: do not talk about minorities assuming that people who belong to them are not present.

Understand that despite good intentions, everyone makes a mistake sometimes. Take responsibility over your mistakes and apologize. Look for information, and do not assume that people who belong to minorities will enlighten you.

Respect

Be respectful of everyone you meet at EAVE workshops. Do not question diversity, rather let people be themselves. Take into consideration differing opinions, beliefs and points of view acknowledging that indivisible human worth belongs to everyone. Recognize and acknowledge things that you do not know much about or that you don’t have experience on.

Do not harass anyone verbally, by prying on their private matters, by touching, by staring or by silencing. Respect everyone’s physical and emotional boundaries.

Communication

We aim to give space for everyone to be heard, with respect to others.

Make an effort to speak in a way that everyone can follow. When possible, use language that doesn’t exclude and aim to discuss and act without attacking others.

When there is photography or filming in our events, we offer a chance to participate without being filmed or photographed. If you want to film or photograph in our events, ask for permission.

Online environments

These guidelines apply to online environments as well. Comment on EAVE’s social media by using respectful language. Inappropriate comments that attack persons or groups of people will be deleted.

Who to contact if you encounter inappropriate behavior at EAVE workshops

In case you encounter inappropriate behavior at EAVE workshops, please feel free to contact any member of the EAVE team.

*These guidelines have been inspired by the Safer Space Guidelines of the Finnish Film Foundation.

 

EAVE Diversity & Inclusion

EAVE has a stated focus on diversity and inclusion as part of its corporate values related to the training of the European screen industry.

We believe that EAVE can support significant and lasting changes to the screen ecosystem in Europe to ensure that the pipeline of producers diversifies, and thus authentic stories from a broader cross-section of communities and perspectives emerge and are shared globally.

Through this work EAVE also provides an example of inclusive operation and programming frameworks for other industry organizations.

Diversity is considered a key focus at EAVE, not only in terms of nationality, geographic spread, race, age and gender, but also in terms of project type, experience, background, involvement in shaping local, regional and national industries and policies and other aspects.

In selecting participants, we attempt to group people with a lot of professional experience and solid audio-visual industry structures together with less experienced individuals with a distinct ability to think out of the box due to weak national industry structures. We have found that this approach allows for better group dynamics at our workshops and mutual learning exchange and inspiration.

EAVE has been successful in levelling the playing field for Low Capacity Countries (LCC) and in integrating the Global South, and will now focus on the integration of marginalised communities within Europe (Black, Indigenous, or People of Colour - BIPOC) while also increasing accessibility for disabled communities.

Examples of workshops that focus on marginalised / underrepresented communities:

• EAVE on Demand Workshop for Sami indigenous producers in Kautokeino in 2019 – new edition in discussions for 2022
• ACCESS Program for BiPOC producers in Canada in 2022 – new edition planned for 2023
• CHANGE Co-production Training Course for documentary projects from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine in 2022 – new edition planned for 2023

In 2022, EAVE has partnered up with EAVE graduate and diversity, equity and inclusion expert Tamara Dawit of the Canada Media Fund to develop a long-term diversity strategy with the goal of implementing concrete and meaningful actions, removing barriers and increasing access to participation for new and specific target groups.

The newly developed strategy will focus both on EAVE`s internal (staff, experts, board of directors and internal policies), as well as external operations (communication, selection of participants, industry partnerships and working groups) and the European audio-visual industry at large.

Moreover, specific scholarships for European residents and citizens who identify as Black, Indigenous, or People of Colour have been created for the EAVE Producers Workshop, EAVE+ and EAVE Marketing Workshop.

“EAVE Producers Workshop program is all I needed to launch a life-time career as an independent producer for non-represented voices” - Alyaa Musa, Black Balance Artistic Production, Sudan

Gender Equality

 EAVE is committed to gender equality and opportunities at every level of our organisation and activities: women are very strongly represented (50% or more) among the EAVE staff and pedagogical team and board. Over the past 10 years 44% of EAVE training applicants and 56% of training participants are women. Women make up for 52% of the film industry professionals of the EAVE network.

We are proud that:

• 92% of female graduates report experiencing a career boost after the training 
• 89% report an acceleration in strategic company development 
• 97% report a high impact on their self-confidence and personal development
• 96% report positive synergies from their integration into the active professional network
• 98% acknowledge the positive impact the on-going privileged access to industry contacts from the entire value chain 

 

Mental Health & Work Life Balance

“Thanks EAVE, for being so open to parents bringing their children and including them in the workshop - it should be, but is not yet the usual way to do so, especially in the film business. On the long term we all together will be able to change this part of the business and create a new way of working together.” – EAVE graduate Regina Jorissen, 2Pilots Filmproduction, Germany

EAVE has partnered up with Parenting at Film Festivals and Red Balloon Alliance aiming at helping industry professionals with kids achieve a better work-life balance. We support and promote the activity of Red Balloon Alliance that offers childcare services at major film festivals in Europe (for example in Cannes, in Berlin or in San Sebastian).

At EAVE workshops we do our best to create a family friendly open space for producers with families to be able to attend the workshops. We offer childcare solutions based on individual needs (collaboration with childcare institutions and individual babysitters).

Since 2009, EAVE integrates morning yoga sessions at our workshops. EAVE YOGA is available also during the year as an online session twice a week with EAVE project manager and certified yoga teacher Tanika Sajatovic.

We have trained therapists among our experts and we offer optional mindfulness sessions and sessions for stress reduction at Producers Workshop.

An online training module has been implemented to train Producers Workshop participants extensively on leadership and especially on resilience by a professional coach. Conflict management and teaching specific negotiation techniques are also part of our programme.

EAVE’s pitching training is provided by a trained and experienced psychologist and participants have the opportunity to have one-to-one meetings about their personal development.

“As a producer you are often very alone but after EAVE, I don't feel alone at all. The workshop gave me possibility to not just talk about my issues but also mirror myself to the situations of my colleagues and to realize that we are in very same boat no matter which part of the world we are from.” - Marja Pihlaja, Tekele Productions, Finland

 

EAVE Green Policy

EAVE took the important step of introducing a concrete and comprehensive green policy in 2021.

We have reviewed all our processes and practices, identified improvements, and defined concrete actions to reach our sustainability goals.

These actions affect the daily operations of staff, the pedagogical team and guest experts, as well as workshop participants; they also have an impact on the choice of EAVE's providers such as hotels, restaurants and event venues.

EAVE has organised its green policy in three key areas:

• Daily functions at workshops, including choice of locations and partners.
• Travel to workshops, festivals, other industry events and meetings.
• Daily office practices, including purchases of equipment and materials.

Among our main goals:

• Encouraging train travels, reducing travels, using public transport
• Mixing onsite programme with online modules
• Drastic reduction of meat consumption, local, regional, seasonal food choice at our events
• Waste recycling, triage
• No plastic policy, less printing
• Online etiquette

 

EAVE Innovation

EAVE’s constant innovation and the renewal of content, expert pool and methods are fundamental elements of EAVE’s DNA, and EAVE IMPACT is part of the same strong community that includes all kinds of industry professionals – financing experts, script consultants, sales agents, distributors, exhibitors, film-fund representatives, advertisers and more – wishing to explore other aspects of their particular field, thus fostering innovation and thinking out of the box.

EAVE fully embraced the new opportunities and the innovation that online training modules can offer and integrated those into our method with:

• blended learning and e-learning modules
• development of a unique learning platform for online workshops during the pandemic: virtual spaces have been created for group works, meetings, social events, libraries, etc.
• development of hybrid workshops
• EAVE Impact Sessions and Ped Talks online
• online and hybrid Think Thanks
• design-thinking methodology
• new methods, apps and tools using data analytics
• supporting data-driven decision-making processes, tech-based marketing and distribution approaches etc.

These modules are complementary to our onsite programme offering face-to-face encounters and the immersion of a residential workshop to create professional relationships that last throughout the producers’ careers and change their professional lives.