Innovation for Media, including eXtended Reality (IA)
The Media Action Plan, aimed at supporting media industry recovery, has three areas: Recovery, transformation, and enabling and empowerment. Transformation foresees innovation actions to support transformation of media industry, and the creation of a European Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR/AR) Industrial Coalition[[https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A52020DC0784]].
Two key ingredients of such transformation are, among others, on the one hand, data know-how and innovation in modular open-source media components, and on the other hand, the development of immersive technologies. Both entertainment and news media have great opportunities for ground-breaking innovations and inventive business models building on the potential of new technologies, including XR.
Two types of innovation proposals are expected:
i. The development of new modular tools, components and/or services addressing technical, organisational, commercial and legal aspects of data management and usage for new media applications. The innovative solutions should be proven useful for the creation and distribution of new formats, in particular of formats that use XR technologies and that could be expandable or applicable, in addition to news media, to the media industry at large and have a potential to be consumed in new environments (e.g. self-driving cars, intermodal transport and tourism). To this end, cooperation within the media sector and across different industrial sectors will be beneficial for the creation of synergies based on the use of data applications.
Collaboration with the media data space will be encouraged already at its initiation phase, and full interoperability with and deployability on it are highly recommended. Once it will be operational, the Media Data Space deployed under the Digital Europe programme will offer the opportunity to the proposals supported by this Call to test and pilot their innovative solutions.
ii. The launch of a dedicated VR Media Lab to foster innovation and new solutions in the field of VR/AR Media. The Lab will develop and prototype advanced solutions for the creation, distribution and consumption of new immersive VR/AR media products and foster innovation by exploring a range of uses for VR/AR technologies, and bring together skills from a variety of disciplines, including technology and the creative sector, to develop new solutions for consumers, business and society.
The VR Media Lab will support creative cooperation on projects that focus on new ways of storytelling and interacting through immersive media. The funded third party projects will focus on content for entertainment, culture and news, as well as virtual and augmented reality applications in other industries, such as tourism, and fields such as education. Solutions developed as part of the VR Media Lab could result in new business models, technological solutions, spinoff companies or partnerships.
At least 1 proposal will be funded for the innovation type i (Max Contribution of EUR 9 million).
One proposal will be funded for type ii (Max Contribution of EUR 8 million).
Financial support to third parties
For grants awarded under the type ii Innovation actions, beneficiaries should provide support to third parties. The support to third parties can only be provided in the form of grants. Each IA for type ii will support third party projects from outstanding media innovators, SMEs and other multidisciplinary actors, so that multiple third parties will be funded in collectively contributing to the innovation area. The consortium will provide the programme logic and vision for the third-party projects, ensure the coherence and coordination of these projects, and provide the necessary technical support, as well as coaching and mentoring, in order to ensure that the collection of third party projects contributes to a significant advancement and impact in the research and innovation domain. These tasks cannot be implemented using the budget earmarked for the financial support to third parties.
Beneficiaries should make explicit the intervention logic for the area, their capacity to attract relevant top talents, to deliver a solid value-adding services to the third-party projects, as well as their expertise and capacity in managing the full life-cycle of the open calls transparently. As support and mobilising of media innovators is key to the type ii IA of this topic, a minimum of 70% of the total requested EU contribution should be allocated to financial support to the third parties.
The Commission considers that proposals with an overall duration of typically 30 months would allow these outcomes to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other durations. For ensuring focused effort, third parties in type ii will be funded through projects typically in the EUR 250 000 to 500 000 range per project, with indicative duration of 12 to 15 months.
In this topic the integration of the gender dimension (sex and gender analysis) in research and innovation content is not a mandatory requirement.