CICANT was recently awarded funding from a total of 12 new R&D projects, in which our research unit is either the project leader or a partner. Competitive funding acquired comes both from Horizon, CERV and Erasmus+ European Commission (EC) funding programmes, or from FCT – the National Foundation for Science and Technology. Under Horizon, CICANT won three grants: CresCine - Increasing the International Competitiveness of the Film Industry in Small European Markets, led by Lusófona and which received top marks from the evaluation panel in its application for funding, as well as MeDeMAP: Mapping Media for Future Democracies and EPIC-WE - Empowered Participation through Ideating Cultural Worlds and Environments: youth imagining, creating and exchanging cultural values and heritage through game-making. With a grant of around 4 million euros, CresCine will rely on a 28-partner network, including Tallinn and Aarhus Universities. The remaining ones - MeDeMAP and EPIC-WE - will be funded at around 3 million euros each, as well as will rely on a 10-partner network. Among the main partners of MeDeMAP, which will be led by the Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, are the Univerzita Karlova (CZ), the IULM University (IT) and Lusófona University. In the EPIC-WE, to be led by Aarhus University, the main partners include Lusófona University and the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision.
In the new European funding line, CERV, the Centre has also obtained funding for three projects: Fem-able - Promoting women's participation in the political domain, led by Lusófona, R2 - Read twice and EEAD - Empowering Europeans Against Disinformation.
Under the Erasmus + programme, GamYES - Gamified Curriculum for Developing Youth’s Entrepreneurial Skills, PROMEnhance - Enhancing management profiles for innovative local development and Re:Sound Design Measures, a project submitted by FilmEU Alliance, have also been recommended for funding.
At a national level, in the Call for R&D Projects in all Scientific Domains - 2022, promoted by FCT, CICANT was involved in 3 projects approved for funding: the Exploratory Research Projects (PeX), either On & Off: atmospheres of dis/connection and CARIM – Contemporary Art - A Tool for an Inclusive and Regenerated Museology; and in the R&D Projects line, GameIN - Games Inclusion Lab: Participatory Media Creation Processes for Accessibility.
Still at a national level, it is also relevant to mention that also last week, CICANT was informed that two of its PhD students won the FCT scholarship for PhD.
All these achievements and top results confirm CICANT’s increasing national and international profile and its key role as one of the leading research units in Portugal in the domains of communication and the cultural and creative industries.