Media literacy for all!
This Thursday 2 and Friday 3 December 2010, more than 300 experts met together in Brussels in order to participate in the international colloquium “Media Literacy For All” organised by the French-speaking Community of Belgium within the framework of the Belgian Presidency of the Council of the European Union.
European policy on media education is going through a crucial phase of emergence that makes it necessary to bring together experiences and exchange good practices within the framework of an open dialogue. The conference “Media Literacy For All”, organised by the Higher Council for Media Literacy (CSEM) of the French-speaking Community of Belgium therefore intended to gather together and connect all the actors concerned with the implementation of lifelong media literacy: educators, trainers, media industries and institutions, educational organisations (school and non-school), people responsible for educational policies, research institutions, etc.
The objective of this European conference was to link together practical experiences and policy recommendations in order to stimulate the implementation of life-long media education, for the benefit of all European citizens. It will result in the Declaration of Brussels for life-long media literacy, written in collaboration with the eight international experts who attended the whole conference: Ida Pöttinger (Germany), Christophoros Christophorou (Cyprus), Vitor Reïa Baptista (Portugal), Sirku Kotilainen (Finland), Nicoletta Fotiade (Romania), Fifi Schwarz (The Netherlands), Evelyne Bévort (France), and Thierry De Smedt (Belgium).
The Declaration of Brussels will be presented to the press in Brussels as at 21 December.
The conference in Brussels had the ambition:
- to identify the principal media skills necessary for all European citizens, with special attention to the different gaps (media, critical, cultural and technical);
- to define for all the educational systems of the European countries, formal and informal, the best ways to take on life-long media literacy with their specific teaching practices;
- to identify strategies allowing each citizen to benefit from the media education he or she needs;
- to generate a collection of recommendations aimed at implementing media education: “The Declaration of Brussels on life-long media literacy”.
The three Ministers of the French-speaking Community concerned with the subject of Media Education, Fadila Laanan, Minister of Culture, the Audiovisual Sector, Health and Equal Opportunities, who is chairing the “Culture and Audiovisual” part of the “Education, Youth, Culture and Sport” Council of the European Union in the course of the second half of 2010, Marie-Dominique Simonet, Minister for Compulsory Education and Improvement Classes, and Evelyne Huytebroeck, Minister for Youth and Youth aid, closed the colloquium within the framework of a debate on the subject “What space is there for policy action on life-long media literacy?”
