The «Days of Future Passed» of the EU Media Literacy Expert Group

As published in the Nordicom Newsletter, 2/2010:

The “Days of Future Passed” of the EU Media Literacy Expert Group, 2006-2010 [Media Education/Media Literacy/Awareness]

by
Vítor Reia-Baptista
Professor
School of Education and Communication
University of Algarve
Faro
PORTUGAL


The first meeting of the Expert Group in Brussels took place a little less than two years after the very interesting Media-Educ conference in Belfast, hosted by Cary Bazalgette of the British Film Institute. This was the first time that many scholars, researchers, teachers, policy makers, industry members and media makers of all kinds and genres, from many different countries and contexts, got together in Europe to discuss mainly the praxis and future of media education. At the time, media literacy was not yet an established concept.

At the conference, there were many vivid discussions about different educational problems concerning all media and also, obviously, film education. It was during one of these more specific discussions, on the upper deck over the Belfast waterfront, that I first met Matteo Zachetti. Then, during that first meeting of the Expert Group in Brussels, we were suddenly talking about the many different approaches and media interests that were embedded in the Group, including film. I remember telling Matteo afterwards, at the end of the meeting, that I felt the discussion was missing the opinions of people from Belfast, and one of these was Klas Viklund from the Swedish Film Institute. At the next meeting, Klas was sitting there along with us. I wanted to recover this personal memory to pay just a small “hommage” to the great capacity for listening that our hosts Aviva Silver and Matteo Zachetti have shown during these four years of work and collaboration, which was, most certainly, one of the major ingredients that contributed to the real progress that the Expert Group has made concerning the process of clearing ideas and the implementation of the concept of media literacy. Thank you both, Aviva and Matteo.

Now that we have come to the end of this Group’s journey, I think we should look to the future with hope and concern, perhaps keeping in mind the words of the Portuguese poet: “É preciso ter saudades do Futuro” (We should be missing the Future). Which means, in my opinion, that we now have a great task to accomplish: We cannot let the common vocabulary and concepts concerning media literacy we have achieved simply fade away in the new melting pot of cross-cultural environment within Media, Arts, Culture and Education. I do, however, most warmly welcome the explicit inclusion of Arts and all the necessary aesthetic dimensions in media literacy discussions, since creativity, along with culture and criticism, is the third unavoidable dimension of the by now almost world famous three Cs of media literacy (and please, do not forget to read once in a while, again and again, the European Charter For Media Literacy as well).

Best wishes for the future, for a deeper and richer media literacy debate.