Evens Foundation Annual Report 2021

About The Evens Foundation

The Evens Foundation is a public benefit organisation that initiates, designs and supports tangible projects and supports innovative individuals that contribute to rethinking the European reality.

Working across the fields of Education, Journalism, the Arts, Democracy and Science, it seeks out new ways of thinking and working, fostering innovation and progressive dialogue at every level of society. By bringing together people from different cultures, communities and contexts, it actively explores how we could live together harmoniously in Europe today.

The Foundation was initiated by Irene Evens-Radzyminska and George Evens in 1990. Having witnessed the horrors of World War Two, which forced them to flee their home in Poland, they found new hope in Belgium. The foundation’s creation was an expression of their belief in – and commitment to – the European Project: a vision of a Europe where unity and solidarity would prevail over discord.

Since then, the Evens Foundation has evolved in response to the changing needs and concerns of communities within the EU and beyond while remaining committed to the values of diversity, freedom, responsibility and solidarity.

Screenshot from animation “Evens Foundation” by Squarefish, Brussels

What We Do

Today, the Evens Foundation strives towards greater understanding and unity between cultures and communities by supporting the work of innovators and leading practitioners across multiple specialisms and disciplines. This is expressed practically through two main strands: projects and prizes.

With its biennial Evens Prizes for Education, Art, Journalism and Science, the Foundation seeks out and recognises practitioners and organisations who are breaking new ground. This is often expressed through an open call for nominees, focusing on a particular subject or challenge: an approach specifically designed to surface ideas and specialisms that often fall outside of the traditional remit of awards programmes. Each of the Prizes is judged by an independent panel of leading figures within each sector, including prominent researchers from prestigious universities, museum and festival directors, high-profile journalists, advocates and activists.

Alongside this, the Foundation collaborates with organisations and individuals to realise projects that engage new and existing audiences and create space for diverse approaches. Since the Foundation’s beginnings, it has taken risks by stimulating experimentation – either by designing its own projects or supporting other independent pioneers in developing pilot programmes that test scientific hypotheses, innovative pedagogies or artistic processes, connecting research to reality. Recent examples include anti-radicalisation resources for teachers, training for journalists in exile, and an exploration into the on-the-ground experiences and needs of journalists in Central-Eastern Europe.

Together, these two strands generate a continually evolving global web of citizens, scientists and researchers, academics, NGOs and institutions, artists, educators, media, philanthropists, philosophers and more: a unique network of people who are helping to forge Europe’s future.

Difference Day- Women Breaking the News 2021

Bacantes, Prelúdio para uma Purga ©Laurent Philippe

Map of Partners

We collaborate with an ever-expanding network of citizens, practitioners, researchers, NGOs, academic and cultural institutions, connecting different communities and perspectives across the continent and beyond.

BELGIUM

1. IHECS

2. Bozar - Centre for Fine Arts

3. Democratische Dialoog

4. Europahuis Ryckevelde

5. European Journalism Training Association

6. Federatie van Mondiale Democratische Organisaties

7. Flemish Peace Institute

8. King Baudouin Foundation

9. kunstZ

10. Mediawijs

11. PIMENTO

12. Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium

13. Université catholique de Louvain

14. Université de Paix asbl

15. Université Libre de Bruxelles

16. Vrije Universiteit Brussel

17. Media & Learning

18. StampMedia

19. Open Society European Policy Institute

20. De Veerman

21. Vredescentrum

22. Are We Europe

23. Erasmus Hogeschool Brussel

24. M HKA – Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp

25. Awe Studio

26. European Endowment for Democracy

27. Journalismfund.eu

28. PEN Vlaanderen

29. Euractiv

30. European Commission

CROATIA

31. Društvo za komunikacijsku medijsku kulturu

32. Hrvatska udruga nastavnika povijesti

33. Centar za mir nenasilje i ljudska prava

Osijek

CZECH REPUBLIC

34. EUROPEUM Institute for European Policy

FINLAND

35. Mediakasvatusseura.The Finnish Society on Media Education

FRANCE

36. Bibliothèque publique d’information

37. Centre Pompidou

38. La Fondation Hippocrène

39. La Ligue de l’Enseignement

40. LE BAL

41. Media Maker

42. La Cie MPDA - Alexandra Lacroix

43. Voxeurop

44. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

45. Theatrum Mundi

GERMANY

46. Institut für Medienpädagogik in Forschung in Praxis

47. Konrad Adenauer Stiftung

48. planpolitik

49. Allianz Foundation

50. Goethe-Institut

51. “A Soul for Europe” Initiative c/o Stiftung Zukunft Berlin

52. Institut für soziale Bewegungen

53. Die Zeit

54. Stiftung Mercator

GREECE

55. ΚΑΡΠΟΣ

56. Place Identity GR Clusters

57. The Green Tank

HUNGARY

58. Káva

ITALY

59. Zaffiria Centro per l’Educazione ai Media

60. ZaLab

61. Internazionale

NORWAY

62. Fritt Ord Foundation

POLAND

63. Centrum Edukacji Obywatelskiej

64. Filmoteka Narodowa – Instytut

Audiowizualny

65. Żydowskie Muzeum Galicja

66. Towarzystwo Edukacji Antydyskryminacyjnej

67. Towarzystwo Inicjatyw Twórczych “ę”

68. European Network Remembrance and Solidarity

69. Polska Fundacja im. Roberta Schumana

70. Stowarzyszenie Nowe Horyzonty

71. Fundacja Krzyżowa dla Porozumienia Europejskiego

72. Instytut Kultury Polskiej, Wydział Polonistyki, Uniwersytet Warszawski

73. Centrum Historii Zajezdnia

74. Wydział Nauk Politycznych Dziennikarstwa, Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu

75. Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights

76. Fundacja Im. Stefana Batorego

ROMANIA

77. Society Mediawise

SPAIN

78. Escola de Cultura de Pau

79. CREA - Community of Research on Excellence for All

80. Digital Future Society

SWEDEN

81. Göteborgs universitet SWITZERLAND

82. European Broadcasting Union THE NETHERLANDS

83. European Journalism Centre

84. European Cultural Foundation

85. EUscreen Foundation

86. Learning for Well-being Foundation

87. EuroClio - European Association of History Educators

88. Stichting Verhalende Journalistiek

89. Inside Polarisation

UK

90. Ariel Trust

91. British Academy

92. Ethical Journalism Network

93. University of Cambridge – Faculty of Education

94. Agora

USA

95. CAF America

96. Media Education Lab at the University of Rhode Island’s Harrington School of Communication and Media.

97. Bertelsmann Foundation

The year 2021 was, for the Evens Foundation, a year of recovery but also uncertainty. After years of interruption due to Covid-19 and a period of enthusiasm for recovery that marked the second part of the year 2020, we had to again limit and then postpone much of our activity. In Belgium and France, we experienced further lockdowns.

Even though the foundation was mobilized to continue its projects for an activity such as ours that requires monitoring numerous initiatives, organizing meetings, and bringing together people and communities, the situation led us to refocus our work towards preparing our strategic orientation for the next five years.

I will give two examples of this refocusing. First, the deepening of our reflection on the future of Europe and the role that European values would play: we have continued to explore the idea that the values that inspired the European Union have a very different reality today than they had in the middle of the 20th century. The notion of solidarity, for example, took on a whole new meaning as Europe embarked on a process of economic recovery and group purchases of vaccines, as was the case in the early months of 2021. In the same way, the notions of freedom and the rule of law should be scrutinized precisely and reformulated when some countries in the heart of Europe are experiencing illiberal drifts. We have brought together specialists and think tanks to debate those issues and have, as an output, published a series of podcasts on such values, a useful contribution by the Foundation when this work is put on the agenda of the

European Union. Another example relates to the exploration of a set of themes at the intersection of social and ecological concerns. They relate to exploratory work on issues dealing with the relationship between the global and the local, proximity and remoteness, with intermediate notions such as intense proximity.

The Evens Foundation lives by the strength of its projects, as we have once again been reminded during a year of uncertainty which, despite the initial difficulties, has given us a new impetus towards the future!

A message from Monique Canto-Sperber chairwoman, executive committee

It is indicative of how fast-paced our world has become that 2021 already feels like half a lifetime ago – a different era.

Although we are still navigating the lingering impact of Covid-19, it is easy to forget that a significant portion of the last year was spent in some form of enforced stasis thanks to the various levels of lockdown that remained in place while vaccine programmes began to roll out across Europe. For international organisations like ours, the ongoing suspension of travel was particularly challenging.

And yet, we also found plenty of reasons to be optimistic, discovering new ways of working, collaborating, and strengthening existing relationships with our partners and building new ones.

For our teams in Antwerp, Paris and Warsaw, 2021 offered a unique opportunity to think about how the Foundation might operate in the future. The energy and research poured into the development of a new strategic plan was an illustration of the team’s commitment to and belief in the Foundation’s values. While that plan was put on hold in favour of a wider rethink of the Foundation’s mission and operation, we must recognise and celebrate that commitment. It is what binds together so many of the Foundation’s partners, supporters, board members and staff – the red thread through all incarnations of the Foundation, past and present.

This red thread runs through the diverse projects and prizes that the team materialised in 2021, despite the restrictions of Covid-19. From a public-facing initiative that reframes the way visitors engage with the often contested, institutional spaces of museums, to a project designed to help young people understand their context within the narrative of European

history, a lecture on radical economics to a pilot training programme for exiled journalists, each project is distinctive to the Foundation’s way of working, centring a collaborative approach that relies on those shared values.

Now that society has returned to a state of accelerated change – environmental, technological and political – we continue to hope that the space Covid-19 created for many to explore different ways of thinking and being will have a tangible, positive effect on the structure of modern society. It is unthinkable that this extraordinary period of loss and upheaval could simply be relegated to history and not be a catalyst for change.

We must keep reminding ourselves of what connects us and not forget the overarching lessons of Covid-19: we are strongest when we work together for the common good, care for one another, and act collectively. To really achieve this we need a concrete, common understanding of a collective goal. That is the challenge facing the Evens Foundation as it determines its new path in an increasingly uncertain world: a daunting challenge, certainly, but also an exciting one.

A message from the team: looking back at 2021

Covid-19: Impacts and Innovations

While 2020 saw a wholesale shutdown in activity for organisations worldwide, by 2021, we had begun to learn to adapt and find new ways of working in response to the restrictions imposed by Covid-19.

The Evens Foundation team found ways to innovate and connect, strengthening existing relationships with our partners, and even realising several key projects, detailed in this report.

Inevitably, some projects did have to be put on hold, particularly those that involved large-scale public gatherings, such as the Foundation’s 30th-anniversary celebrations. But others took on new life, and our prizes took on a fresh importance – particularly the Journalism Prizes, whose recipients were affected by the wider impact of Covid-related cuts on an already precarious profession.

While the team has long-used video calling as a collaborative tool – necessitated by the geographical spread of the Foundation’s offices – during Covid-19, this approach came into its own.

It is undeniable that the quality of interactions is always improved by in-person connection. Still, Zoom allowed the team to continue to work together, share ideas, and connect to other European organisations.

Other digital platforms, such as Facebook, also took on a new significance. Instead of simply cancelling all talks and events, we worked with our partners to realise these activities online, including live debates and round-table talks. While these were open events, meaning no registration data was collected, we know anecdotally that moving online meant that some events were able to reach audiences that might not

have attended in person, expanding the geographical reach of our activities.

This experience helped inform the launch of a new digital strategy later in the year, with a holistic approach to growing the Foundation’s digital audiences across its social media platforms, newsletters and website.

We will take away many lessons from our experience of Covid-19 as an organisation. Chief among these are the often underexplored potential of digital platforms for both our internal operations and external-facing projects, and the importance of agility and flexibility in both thought and action. While hard learned, we are hopeful that these lessons will help us create a more resilient and focused Foundation for the future.

© Brian Asare - unsplash

Common Purpose Through Differences

Common Purpose Through Differences is one of the two strategic initiatives that provide the core structure for the activities of the Foundation. Initially conceived in 2018, the two initiatives provide a framework for the Foundation’s projects and its core activities.

The projects that fall within the Common Purpose Through Differences initiative are designed to surface the commonalities that connect the multifarious communities within contemporary Europe.

From explorations of political community to representations of history within education and providing a platform for diverse experiences of museum spaces, each project aims to critically engage with and find ways to celebrate the multiplicities within culture and society.

Projects: Sharing European Histories (p.8), Museum in Dialogue (p.9), Evens Lecture Series (p.9), What Makes An Assembly? (p. 10), Voi[e,x,s] (p. 10)

Sharing European Histories

The Sharing European Histories initiative was developed by the Evens Foundation in partnership with EuroClio, the European Association of History Educators. Its aim is to support innovative projects and pioneering strategies that help young people understand the complexity, multiplicity and transnationality of European history.

In 2021, the focus was on the translation and dissemination

of the first set of five teaching strategies developed under the initiative. The target audience was educators across Europe.

The strategies include using object biographies, analysing historical figures, deconstructing commemorative practices, studying the roots of important ideas and exploring personal life stories to understand the complexity of history. As they are not linked to a specific subject, they can be applied to many different topics in history curricula and are widely adaptable for educators across Europe.

The team worked with an independent animator to create a short, engaging film promoting the teaching strategies, which was shared through social media, newsletters and other digital platforms.

The Evens Foundation and EuroClio also invited local experts to prepare a webinar series, based on their own experiences of experimenting with the different strategies. This series took place via YouTube in Autumn 2021, and consisted of five pre-recorded sessions and three ‘live’ reflection sessions.

© David Sypniewski

Museum in Dialogue

Museum in Dialogue was a joint initiative of the Evens Foundation and the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in collaboration with FMDO vzw and De Veerman vzw. Together with a group of interested visitors, the project was created to explore how museums and their collections can foster new encounters and dialogues with diverse audiences.

In 2021, the Evens Foundation helped coordinate the launch of a small publication, sharing insights and lessons from the process. The publication was targeted at professionals working in other institutions, foundations and similar organisations that deal with a museum or exhibitionary context.

In parallel, a working group was created to focus on the development of a dedicated Museum in Dialogue podcast series with De Veerman vzw. This series, launched in 2021 and published on the audio platform Soundcloud and the website of Koninklijke Museum voor Schone Kunsten van België (Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium), sheds fresh light on artworks from the Old Masters collection of these museums.

Both the podcasts and the publication were presented during the conference of the ICOM International Committee for Education and Cultural Action, which focused on the topic of cocreation, in October 2021.

The Evens Lecture Series

The Evens Lecture Series is an ongoing initiative that is a manifestation of the Foundation’s commitment to contribute actively to public debate. The series invites renowned speakers and specialists from different fields and disciplines to discuss and examine the pressing issues of our time and their impact on society through the format of a public lecture.

In 2020, the Evens Foundation planned a series of lectures to take place over a two-year period. The subsequent disruptions and restrictions of Covid-19 forced the Foundation to scale back its ambitions, and only one event was able to take place in 2021.

On 29 November, the renowned economist Ann Pettifor presented her lecture ‘We need an alternative to globalisation - a new internationalism: for the many, not the few’ at Bozar in Brussels.

Pettifor – best known for her prediction of the Great Financial

Crisis in ‘The Coming First World Debt Crisis’ and her subsequent book ‘The Case for The Green New Deal’, published in 2019 – argued that the stabilisation of national and global ecosystems could only be achieved by first transforming the international financial system.

A power transfer from the state to the financial markets had weakened democracy and laid the foundations for financial and ecological crises, she said. Drawing on the work of John Maynard Keynes, historical evidence and recent European Union developments, she explored one possible route towards transformation.

The event concluded with a conversation between Pettifor, ecological economist Tom Bauler (ULB) and political economist and philosopher Jens van ‘t Klooster (KU Leuven), moderated by journalist Mehreen Khan (Financial Times).

Attendance was limited due to uncertainty over lockdown restrictions. Despite this, the lecture reached a wide audience through press coverage and a video of the talk published on the Evens Foundation’s YouTube channel, which has been watched more than 400 times.

The Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy, Virgo inter Virgines, before 1489 © Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels / Photograph: J. Geleyns

Pieter Bruegel (after?) Yawning Man end of the 16th Century?

©Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels / Photograph: F. Maes

©Yannick Sas

What Makes An Assembly?

What Makes An Assembly is a new publication being developed by the Evens Foundation in partnership with Sternberg Press, as part of Assemblies: Modern Rituals –a long-term research project initiated by the Foundation in 2018.

Over the past decade, the world has witnessed a resurgence of popular and citizens’ assemblies, alongside a rise in public protests, occupations and social movements: a symptom of growing disillusionment and defiance against traditional forms of governance and representation, and an increasing demand for a more radical democracy. To begin to understand how and why these forms of assembly are created, what they might mean, and what they might become in the future, demands a transdisciplinary approach to research. This project moves towards this goal, bringing together leading practitioners from the arts and sciences to exchange and explore ideas.

The initial phase of the research – focusing on the role of the citizen assembly during periods of social and political unrest – was conducted in 2019. The Foundation’s ambition was then to create a forum through which practitioners from different disciplines who are connected to assembly making, such as architects, politicians, activists, urban planners, and academics, could gather. However, Covid-19 presented a significant challenge. The publication was developed as a solution: a platform through which ideas and innovations could be generated, shared and discussed. The editors appointed to oversee the publication are Anne Davidian, head of the Evens Foundation’s Paris office, and political scientist Laurent Jeanpierre.

As part of the commissioning process for the publication, the Foundation has invited leading architects and designers to create new proposals, which each present a different potential infrastructure for an assembly. The Foundation has begun working on plans to realise at least one of these experimental projects in the form of an installation at Centre Pompidou, building on the Foundation’s existing partnership with this leading cultural institution.

Voi[e,x,s]

The Evens Foundation and the research centre Theatrum Mundi established the Voi[e,x,s] Research Fellowship in 2019 to investigate how a shared aesthetic experience could enrich the relationship between people and their environment, centred around the transformation of the disused railway depot Chapelle-Charbon in Paris.

While the railway depot is being turned into an urban park and housing, the opera company MDPA - Alexandra Lacroix, composer Marta Gentilucci, and Theatrum Mundi, proposed to capture the process and to create new memories for the people living in the neighbourhood through workshops and performances.

Dimitri Szuter – holder of the Voi[e,x,s] Research Fellowship initiated by Evens Foundation and Theatrum Mundi – worked with Dr John Bingham-Hall on a bilingual publication documenting the performance-making and workshop process and the ways aesthetic experiences can stage encounters between residents and the urban transformations taking place around them. The resulting publication is now available online.

© Centre Pompidou, Herve Veronese

© Theatrum Mundi

Norms and Values Within the European Reality

Norms and Values Within the European Reality is the second of the core strategic initiatives that the Foundation has been pursuing since 2018.

The projects that fall within this initiative are characterised by a focus on the ideologies and experiences that inform how the broadly diverse communities, institutions, organisations and individuals within Europe understand and relate to each other.

A strong focus is placed on projects that seek to support the democratic ideal and highlight the practical challenges and importance of contemporary democracy. The projects in this area may also seek to challenge existing norms that undermine or create a lack of security for specific communities, either by shining a spotlight on miscommunication and prejudice, or by creating new opportunities and initiatives for minority groups.

Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are another key thread within the Norms and Values Within the European Reality initiative, reflecting one of the Evens Foundation’s own core values.

(Re)thinking Values in Europe

One of the Evens Foundation key initiatives is to examine ethical issues, values and norms in Europe. As part of this, the Foundation formulated the ambition to bring together think tanks to discuss the key values that underlie the European reality: putting values at the core of discourse and challenging organisation to address and discuss the principles behind their work. There has long been debate about whether or not social sciences can ever be value-free, so it is also important to recognise and highlight that any discussion around values

can never be held in dissociation of the participants’ own values, norms, and ideological foundations.

In 2021, the Evens Foundation and independent media organisation Are We Europe, designed and recorded a series of six podcasts called The Seventh Value. Its objective was to collect diverse opinions and visions about the six values that lie at the basis of our European societies whilst exploring what it means to be European today.

Each episode explores a different value, diving into contemporary stories about Europe like migration, Brexit and the impact of mining pollution on local communities, and bringing together a diverse range of think tanks and research centres for a unique, open discussion. At the end of each episode, the participants are invited to add their own new value: the ‘seventh value’.

The think tanks and research centres participating are: The Green Tank (Human Dignity), Institute for Social Movements (Freedom), Agora (Democracy), Digital Future Society (Equality), Europeum (Rule of Law) and Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights (Human Rights).

Projects: (Re)thinking Values in Europe (p.11), Journalistic Voices Diversified (p.12), Difference Day (p.12), Kleine Große Schritte (p.13), Resilience Reports (p.14), Building Trust in Journalism (p.15), (In)Separable (p.16), Over the Wall (p.17)

The series will air on major podcasting platforms in 2022, and will also be integrated into the Foundation’s 30th-anniversary event.

Journalistic Voices Diversified

Journalistic Voices Diversified is a new pilot programme, designed to support refugee and exiled journalists to resume, progress or re-address their careers in Europe.

Displaced journalists frequently enter Europe with a remarkable range of skills but they experience exclusion from employment circuits, cultural barriers and an overall impossibility to advance in their professional path.

Created in collaboration with Are We Europe and the Amsterdam-based narrative journalism foundation Stichting Verhalende Journalistiek, the programme aspires to create an

environment that could offer participants the opportunity to pursue their career in Europe through a temporary traineeship placement, workshops and mentoring. A specific focus will be put on narrative practices and immersive storytelling.

The first call for participants was published at the very end of 2021, and participants will be selected for the programme early in 2022.

Difference Day

The Evens Foundation has a long-standing association with Difference Day, a unique event created to celebrate freedom of expression and highlight the work and importance of independent journalists and activists.

In 2021, the event – which usually takes place at venues across Brussels – was transformed into a digital experience due to the Covid-19 restrictions. On 2 and 3 May, the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Erasmus University College Brussels, BOZAR and the Evens Foundation joined forces once again to raise awareness of press freedom and freedom of speech.

The seventh edition of Difference Day was dedicated to the theme of “Women Breaking the News”. On Sunday 2 May, two panel discussions with female journalists took place hosted by Annelies Beck (VRT) and Caroline Hick (RTBF): Women Journalists Behind the News and Women Journalists on the Front Line.

On Monday 3 May the Difference Day Honorary Title was awarded to Chinese journalist Zhang Zhan, who covered the Corona outbreak in Wuhan. ULB and VUB awarded a Doctor Honoris Causa to Ms Svetlana Alexievich, a Belarusian investigative journalist, essayist and oral historian. Waad Al-Kateab, director of the film For Sama, also received the Foundation P&V Citizenship Award. Vice-President of the European Commission Mrs Věra Jourová was a guest speaker.

In 2022, we plan to help Difference Day re-establish a physical presence.

© Luis Miguel Cáceres Ortiz

Kleine Große Schritte

In 2020, the Evens Foundation initiated a new partnership with Ariel Trust (UK) and planpolitik (Germany) to facilitate the wider dissemination of an online interactive educational resource called Skills to Resist Radicalisation.

Skills to Resist Radicalisation was developed originally for the British context by Ariel Trust, one of the shortlisted candidates for the 2020 Evens Education Prize. The resource allows primary school teachers and their pupils to explore issues of extremism and radicalisation, and to build young people’s resilience to such messages.

From previous experience, we know that a thorough

adaptation process is crucial to ensure that a tool or resource answers local needs, habits, sensitivities and tastes. The role of the Foundation was to facilitate this process.

Berlin-based planpolitik, an organisation that specialises in designing interactive educational formats on political and social topics and one of the candidates shortlisted for the 2017 Evens Peace Education Prize, accepted the demanding task of adapting the resource to fit the German context, where teachers are confronted with similar challenges.

Throughout 2021, several adaptation meetings took place, each time focusing on another module to explain and understand the changes proposed by planpolitik in both

storyline and the exercise. This made the whole experience a rich learning process for all parties involved.

In October 2021, the first version of the German edition of the resource was presented to and tested by the German Respekt Coaches network.

The new German version of the resource is titled “Kleine Große Schritte: Umgang mit Ausgrenzung und Extremismus Erproben” (“Small Big Steps: Practicing to Deal with Exclusion and Extremism”) and is freely accessible for educators online.

© Illustration - Daniel Mueller

© Illustration - Daniel Mueller

Resilience Reports

As the scale of the Covid-19 pandemic began to become clear in 2020, the Evens Foundation partnered with the European Journalism Centre to launch Resilience Reports – a series of studies investigating how news organisations across Europe dealt with the impact of the health emergency – which continued into 2021.

Both media organisations and journalists were placed under extreme stress by this new and challenging reality. Independent organisations were forced to adapt their business strategies and operations, seeking to implement sustainable practices in a moment of extreme hardship when a drop in advertising and canonical revenue systems had greatly affected their activities. Meanwhile, journalists were tackling an onslaught of misinformation and a demand for reliable information under extraordinary circumstances.

The initial aim of the series was to capture and share some of these experiences. The initiative targeted 24 innovative

newsrooms – across 19 different European countries – operating in various areas, including fact-checking, investigative and local journalism. The project was made possible with the collaboration of media professionals working at the organisations involved, ranging from editors, to membership managers, directors and audience engagement leads.

The final report, summarising the findings of the series, titled “The Resilience Report 2020: How Europe’s independent media dealt with the coronavirus pandemic in 2020”, was published online in 2021.

An interview with Tara Kelly, who led the project for the European Journalism Centre, authored 24 of the featured case studies and was co-author of the Resilience Reports summary report, was published online by Voxeurop and is available to read in English, French, Italian and Polish.

The material generated by the reports, including the learnings from the project (operational and editorial shifts due to the pandemic), were made available through Voxeurop to a group of 5,000 journalists through a dedicated newsletter.

© European Journalism Centre

Building Trust in Journalism

The Building Trust in Journalism project explores the conditions and needs of media communities in Central Eastern Europe. Its overarching aim is to raise awareness of the importance of ethical professional journalism in building trust in the media and in facilitating the crucial role journalism can play in fostering democracy.

Launched in 2019, the project is a partnership between the Evens Foundation, the Ethical Journalism Network (EJN) and the Fritt Ord Foundation. The project has now been running for three years, publishing a series of policy reports focusing on different countries, and continues to evolve.

Initially, plans for the project included a conference and dedicated workshop in each of the focus countries following the publication of each report. This was only possible in Poland before the Covid-19 pandemic forced a change in strategy.

Instead, in 2021, the series was expanded to include Georgia (published in October 2021) and Ukraine (scheduled for early 2022). New strategies were also explored for

disseminating and creating dialogue around the project’s research outcomes.

Work also continued on delivering the policy reports that were already planned, covering the Czech Republic and Slovakia. An online panel conversation based on the project’s findings, titled “Exploring the crackdown on freedom of expression in Central Eastern Europe”, took place on 11 October 2021. An interview about the project with Chris Elliott – EJN trustee, former Readers’ editor at The Guardian and co-author of the report on Poland – was published online by Voxeurop.

An initial study visit to research the media landscape in Ukraine was conducted in the autumn of 2021.

The project has drawn the attention of several institutions and organisations working with Central and Eastern European media, who are interested in translating the findings into practice.

© David Sypniewski

(In)Separable. Difficult Subjects in Polish-Jewish Relations

In 2021, the Evens Foundation continued its partnership with the Galicia Jewish Museum in Kraków, Poland, with the “(In)Separable. Difficult subjects in Polish-Jewish relations” project, addressing and seeking to overcome key stereotypes and misunderstandings around Polish-Jewish relations.

Originally, this project was a response to a series of events that put this relationship and the ongoing process of reconciliation between communities in Poland under threat. Lack of understanding and knowledge, misconceptions and anti-Semitic prejudices continue to shape the way Jews and the Holocaust are perceived. This is a global issue but is particularly acute in Poland.

In 2021, for the third edition of the project, the focus was on the role – both positive and negative – played by the media in shaping attitudes and influencing the views of the public, which was explored through a series of public discussions.

Each conversation was born out of a concrete example, such as a press excerpt or some photography, which was accompanied by a commentary on its origin and its societal or historical context. The debates (with one exception) were led by Kazimiera Szczuka, literary historian and critic, former TV journalist and social activist, with diverse panels relating to each theme.

Due to a high level of interest, the debates were simultaneously translated into English for the first time, and the restrictions of Covid-19 also meant that some of the debates pivoted to hybrid online-offline formats, helping them reach a wider, global audience.

The list of the topics in the third edition included:

Between Fascination and Hate. The Image of Jews in Contemporary Polish Culture and Media. (March 2021)

Between Auschwitz and Oświęcim. Contrary Narratives on Poland. (April 2021)

Between Silence and Propaganda. The Evolution of the Narrative on the Righteous Among the Nations in Postwar Poland. (May 2021)

Between a Monument and a Product. The Processes of Commemoration and Commercialization of Post-Jewish Spaces. (June 2021)

Between Tradition and Modernity. The Contemporary Polish-Jewish Community. (September 2021)

Between Desire and Contempt. The Historic and Contemporary Images of Jewish Women. (October 2021)

Between Us. Polish Fears in Media and Mass Culture (November 2021)

© Galicia Jewish Museum

Over the Wall

Over the Wall was an exhibition that grew out of an oral history project designed by the Antwerp Peace Centre to capture memories of a key period in modern history – 1989-1991 –that culminated in the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

The Evens Foundation was a key partner in the project, which seeks to encourage public debate about the importance of democracy and freedom today by looking at experiences of the past.

Bringing together the real-life stories of 15 people who lived through the transition from communism to democracy, the exhibition explored the social, political and cultural impact of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Shaped by personal narratives, the exhibition brought this history to life.

En Presence des Images

To give the exhibition further longevity and impact, the partners also worked together to create a free educational resource package, capturing the material gathered from the show and reframing it as a tool for teachers and educators. This resource is now available to download online.

The opening night of the exhibition on 9 November 2021 included a session with three witnesses who lived under and witnessed the fall of communism in Poland, Romania and Germany. Hosted by journalist Karen Billiet (radio Klara), it prompted a lively exchange. The event also included a keynote speech by the researcher Maarten van Alstein, who emphasised the importance of preserving and sharing personal stories to bring history to life for future generations.

Towards the end of 2021, the Evens Foundation launched a new collaboration with the French daily newspaper Libération: “En Presence des Images” – an editorial series developed with our long-standing partner LE BAL, the renowned Parisian research and exhibition centre dedicated to visual studies.

Eleven authors were invited to explore photographs that have marked or unsettled us, shaped our vision of the world or been relegated to the blind spots of our collective memory. The texts are intended to unfold the images and their historical,

political and cultural significations, revealing how our gaze has been conditioned, and how ways of seeing persist or change over time.

Emmanuelle Bayamack-Tam opened the series, followed by Bertrand Schefer, Arno Bertina, Kaoutar Harchi, Mathieu Larnaudie, Ryoko Sekiguchi, Oliver Rohe, Olivia Rosenthal, Tristan Garcia, Maylis de Kerangal and Helène Gaudy.

The texts were published every Saturday, from October to December 2021, in French and in open access in the online version of the newspaper, with the articles in series reaching more than 110,000 readers. The articles were particularly well received on social media, where they generated significant engagement.

© Matthias De Boeck

© DR © Catherine Tambrun

© Levin Corbin Handy/Library of Congress Washington © Reuters © Anne-Christine Poujoulat/AFP © Robert Adams/Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

© Thomas Lohnes/ Pool via Reuters

© UNWRA/Getty images

Evens Prizes

The Evens Prizes are a core part of the Foundation’s activities. Awarded biannually, they highlight innovative practices and achievements by individuals and organisations across Europe.

Each Prize honours a different area of practice, covering Education, Journalism, the Arts and Science, and has its own programme structure, reflecting different areas of concern and purpose within each field.

The Prize programmes are continually evolving, helping the Foundation identify new challenges, insights and perspectives and contributing significantly to the Foundation’s ever-expanding transdisciplinary network of innovators.

The new Evens Arts Prize and Evens Journalism Prize programme cycle began in 2021, and judging was able to take palace despite Covid-19, thanks to the flexibility and patience of the judges and the Foundation’s team, who facilitated the calls, nominations and judging.

The Foundation also began making plans to find new ways to celebrate the recipients of its Prizes from 2020 and 2021. Covid-19 prevented the team from organising awards ceremonies or Prize-related events, so team members identified the 30th-anniversary event planned for 2022 as an opportunity to create a special moment of celebration with an honours ceremony for all of the laureates at Bozar in Brussels.

The Evens Arts Prize

The Evens Arts Prize has been honouring artists that engage with contemporary challenges in Europe for more than 20 years. The biennial Prize carries a sum of €15,000 and is judged by an independent jury of leading curators, festival directors and other industry figures. Laureates are selected from a list of internationally acclaimed artists, who are nominated by representatives of 25 major European cultural institutions. Occasionally, the jury may also award a Special Mention distinction, recognising outstanding work and contributions to the European art scene.

The 2021 jury, chaired by Ernest Van Buynder, Honorary Chair, M HKA, consisted of Daniel Blanga Gubbay, Artistic Co-Director of Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels; Manuel

Borja-Villel, Director of Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid; Carlo Chatrian, Artistic Director of the Berlinale, Berlin; Anne Hilde Neset, Director of Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo; and Christine Standfest, Dramaturg, Curator, ImPulsTanz, Vienna.

The Evens Arts Prize 2021 was awarded to choreographer and dancer Marlene Monteiro Freitas (1979, Cape Verde) in recognition of “the singular and compelling force of the choreographic worlds” she creates.” The jury particularly praised the Lisbon-based artist’s rich and layered scrutiny of European cultural traditions and their legacies. Often merging genres, myths and allegories, her works deftly undermine implicit power structures, reimagining traditions not as fixed absolutes, but as fluid encounters between subjectivities.

The jury also awarded a Special Mention to Andrea Büttner (1972, Stuttgart, Germany), recognising the Berlin-based artist’s “rich, multifaceted work, which composes and dismantles relationships between cultural registers, philosophical and aesthetic traditions of Western modernity, and European histories of fascism and exploitation.” The jury particularly noted Büttner’s ability to uncover the transformative potentials of collaborative processes, illuminating otherwise shrouded forms of resistance, togetherness and community.

Both Freitas and Büttner’s work will be celebrated through a series of events during 2022.

Marlene Monteiro Freitas, image from Le Mal © Peter Honnemann - Kampnagel

The Evens Journalism Prize

The Evens Journalism Prize aims to reward journalists whose work contributes highly to making Europe more comprehensive and accessible to a broad audience. The biannual price carries an award of €15,000 and attracts nominations via a call that is sent to leading practitioners within journalism and related fields, including previous laureates and collaborators. The laureate is chosen from the nominations by an independent jury.

In 2021, the Prize was awarded in two categories: the Evens Journalism Prize | Education and the Evens Journalism Prize | Geopolitics. By focusing on these two categories, the Foundation hopes to shine a light on the work of established professionals who have developed an expertise in specific areas that might be overlooked or that are of particular urgency in the contemporary socio-political context.

Each of the two categories was developed with its own programme and jury. Both of the laureates’ work will be further highlighted through events in 2022, and is further explored through interviews published on the Evens Foundation website and shared via its social media channels.

The Evens Journalism Prize | Education

For its 2021 Education edition, the Prize focussed on issues including school, higher education and vocational education, and exploring the characteristics of specific educational policies and their effect on both the national and international community.

The jury was chaired by Valentina Pop, Financial Times, and included: Sam Freedman, Ark & New Statesman; Juliane von Reppert-Bismarck, Lie Detectors; Sally Reynolds, Media & Learning; and Ana Torres Menárguez, El País.

They decided unanimously to award the Evens Journalism Prize 2021 | Education to Justyna Suchecka, in recognition of her creative approach to reporting and her ability to convey the realities on the ground to a wide audience.

The Warsaw-based journalist uncovers the personal experiences of educators, creating stories that reveal the human impact of education policies and politics at a local and national level. The jury praised her impressive dexterity in surfacing and exploring specialised and often underreported topics. Confronting challenging issues while connecting Polish experiences to a broader European context, her relatable style of reporting uses an imaginative approach to transform and unpick complicated stories, creating accessible articles that open up the often complex field of education to a wider readership.

The Evens Journalism Prize | Geopolitics

For its 2021 Geopolitics edition, the Prize focused on contemporary dynamics in the European region, its power plays, geographical characteristics and recent history.

The jury was chaired by Valentina Pop, Financial Times, and included: Tatev Hovhannisyan, openDemocracy; Mariangela Paone, Uam/El País; Iliana Papangeli, Solomon; Rita Siza, Publico; Elien Spillebeen, MO*.

The Evens Journalism Prize 2021 | Geopolitics was awarded to Giacomo Zandonini, for his outstanding contributions to analysing European policy-making and its connection to and impact on West African countries.

The Rome-based, freelance journalist’s work reveals the often complex connections between European policy and conflict in West Africa and the Sahel. His articles explore issues such as migration and mobility, human trafficking, and the ways politics shape the EU’s response. The jury recognised his “unique talent for identifying thorny yet unexplored geopolitical questions and decoding them through the juxtaposition of official narratives and human histories”, adding that he “connects dots in unexpected ways, drawing together seemingly disjointed strands into a close and coherent narrative” with thorough and in-depth investigations. Zandonini’s work clearly demonstrates how important journalism is in understanding urgent issues.

© TVN24

© Natalia Alana

Evens Media Education Prize: Special Event with 2017 laureate ZaLab

The Evens Foundation is continually searching for new ways to strengthen its network of laureates, support their work, and connect them to other collaborators.

ZaLab, recipient of the 2017 Evens Media Education Prize –which has since evolved into the Journalism and Education Prizes – is a collective of six filmmakers and social workers who collaborate to produce, distribute and promote independent social documentaries.

The Foundation is firmly committed to furthering the dissemination of our Laureates’ good practices, and in 2021 supported ZaLab in the organisation of two online events, one in Belgium and one in Poland.

The first of these was a three-hour online workshop, which took place on 10 May and introduced a group of students of Social Arts at the Institute of Polish Culture (University of Warsaw) to ZaLab’s approach and principles. Both ZaLab and the participants and representatives from the Institute of Polish Culture expressed their interest in developing further collaborations. Initial ideas for furthering this connection include student internships and workshops.

This was followed on 18 May 2021 by an online seminar on participatory video with ZaLab and Media & Learning, an international, not-for-profit association that aims to stimulate the use of media as a way to enhance innovation

and creativity in teaching and learning across all levels of education in Europe. Hosted by Sally Reynolds, the discussion brought together a number of practitioners and researchers from Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands to exchange knowledge around three key themes: ‘Participatory and collaborative work during the pandemic’, ‘Engagement and power in participatory processes’ and ‘Promotion of participatory practices’.

© Thomas Swann

Special Projects

Alongside the core work carried out within the main axes of focus, as outlined over the previous pages of this report, the Evens Foundation also engages with a limited number of special projects. These allow the Foundation to make strategic and flexible decisions around events or projects that further its overarching mission, beyond the axes outlined in its strategic plan.

Mayday Magazine

On the occasion of the anniversary of the Schuman Declaration on 9 May, Are We Europe, Bozar, Bertelsmann Foundation and the Evens Foundation joined forces again for the second issue of Mayday Magazine –an annual publication that aims to explore the lessons of Europe’s past, understand the intensities of it current reality and envisage its future.

At a moment when vaccinations were rolling out across Europe, opening up new horizons and perspectives after a long period of stasis for many, the 2021 edition sought a diversity of answers to the question: what next?

How can we avoid the mistakes of the past? How can we learn from this period of disruption and prepare for the future

Chief among these in 2021 were the latest iteration of an ongoing collaboration with the cultural institution Bozar in Brussels on Mayday Magazine, and the early stages of organisation for the Foundation’s 30th-anniversary event, which was rescheduled to 2022 due to a new wave of Covid restrictions and infections in Belgium and the surrounding countries.

together? From the mystical landscapes of Iceland to the shores of the Mediterranean, the magazine aimed to take readers on a journey across Europe and beyond, to explore future scenarios.

Journalist and coordinator for BOZAR’s Agora programme Karl van den Broeck curated five sessions of discussions and interviews on 9 May to support the launch of the issue: `

The new Roaring Twenties?

Could the end of the health crisis herald a new incarnation of the Roaring Twenties? With Teresa O’Connell and Karolina Szedja.

Europe and democracy

In the wake of the Conference on the Future of Europe, a digital platform that invites citizens to share their vision for the future of the European Union, check out the interviews with European Commission Vice-President for Democracy and Demography, Dubravka Šuica, and historian and expert on Europe, Luuk Van Middelaar.

Are the United States showing the way?

With Joe Biden marking the famous “hundred days” of his presidency, Karl Van den Broeck asked prominent American journalist Thomas Friedman to talk about the future, and, in particular, the future of EU-US relations.

Homelands - New European Writing

Three winners of the European Prize for Literature, Mathias Nawrat (Germany), Lana Bastasic (BosniaHerzegovina) and Irene Solà (Spain), discussed the possible literary contradiction between country of origin and European identity in a round table chaired by Nicky Aerts.

Interview: Amin Maalouf

An exceptional interview with Franco-Lebanese author Amin Maalouf who, following his latest book Adrift: How Our World Lost Its Way, offers a perspective on transatlantic relations. With Safia Kessas.

30th-Anniversary Event

The Evens Foundation team has been planning a special event to celebrate 30 years of partnerships, projects and prizes. This will be a moment to bring together friends of the Foundation, past and current partners, and potential future collaborators, as well as recognise the most recent Prize laureates, who were not able to have award ceremonies due to Covid-19.

Communications

In October 2021, the Evens Foundation advertised for a new member of the team specialising in communications. This led to the recruitment in November of a Communications Officer on a freelance basis, working part-time from the Antwerp office.

The first two projects initiated by the new Communications Officer began to materialise towards the end of 2021 in the form of an ambitious digital strategy for 2022, which seeks to aggressively grow the Foundation’s ‘owned’ audience through existing and new channels, and a new internal newsletter aimed at building a communications

Building on the Foundation’s existing partnership with cultural and arts institution BOZAR in Brussels, the team began to work on an ambitious programme that strove to be inclusive and engaging. Spanning an entire day, the event would include moments of introspection and wide-ranging discussions about the future of Europe and the role of the Evens Foundation, and showcase the work of selected partners and the 2020 and 2021 Prize laureates, as well as a more traditional party.

While this was initially scheduled to take place in 2021, after a number of delays, the Foundation’s team made a collective decision to move the event to 2022 due to continuing uncertainty and changes in regulations on public gatherings. This provided additional time to create a series of short documentary-style films about the Prize laureates – a project that would involve filming in a number of different countries with different film crews, which began to unfold in 2021.

bridge between the team that works day-to-day across the Foundation’s offices and the board.

In November 2021, the Communications Officer also secured a number of mainstream press articles around the Evens Lecture Series, with interviews with Ann Pettifor appearing in national news outlets in Belgium and the Netherlands.

The role of the Communications Officer will continue to evolve in 2022 when the main focus will be on creating content for and promoting the Foundation’s 30th-anniversary event and its new strategic plan.

The Evens Foundation Team

Board of Directors

Yolande Avontroodt

Angélique Berès

Monique Canto-Sperber

Corinne Evens (Co-founder and Honorary President)

Déborah Flon

Daniel Kropf

Gerard Salole

Xavier Vidal

Francine Wachsstock

Executive Committee

Monique Canto-Sperber (Chair)

Corinne Evens

Xavier Vidal

The Team

Antwerp

Caroline Coosemans

Marjolein Delvou

Federica Mantoan

Maria Orejas

Anna Winston

Paris

Anne Davidian

Warsaw

Hanna Zielińska

Magdalena Braksator

Published by The Evens Foundation

© 2022 Evens Foundation www.evensfoundation.be

Editor: Anna Winston

Design: Wils & Peeters Graphic Design

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