Horizon Mission Student Pilots call for proposals
What is the call about?
FilmEU_WIRE brings together eight European higher education institutions to collaborate around the common objective of jointly promoting artistic research, innovation and educational activities in the multidisciplinary field of Film and Media Arts. This call is designed to support the integration of early career researchers.
The WIRE Student pilots will test an innovative interdisciplinary agenda that promotes the use of artistic research to address the five Horizon Missions. This year, the FilmEU Alliance calls for proposals for new student pilots to work on one of the following topics, corresponding to Horizon Missions: climate change; cancer; soil; oceans; and smart cities.
HM1 : Adaptation to Climate Change
This mission invites artists to work with science, technology, and communities to explore how societies can live with climate uncertainty. Artistic research can make climate risks tangible, translate data into emotion, and co-create new narratives of adaptation, resilience, and care at local and planetary scales.
HM2 : Cancer
Beyond biomedical research, cancer raises profound questions about the body, identity, memory, and care. Artistic research can rehumanize health through artistic enquiry, explore lived experience, ethics, stigma, prevention, and healing, offering new forms of knowledge that connect medicine, society, and culture.
HM3 : Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities
This mission opens space for artists to design and rethink urban life—mobility, housing, public space, and digital systems—through creative experimentation. Artistic research can prototype alternative city visions, engage citizens, and reveal the social and cultural dimensions of sustainability and “smartness.”
HM4 : Restore Our Ocean and Waters
Oceans, rivers, and wetlands are ecological, cultural, and political spaces. Artistic research can connect marine science with storytelling, sound, film, and immersive media to raise awareness, shift perceptions, and explore new relationships between humans and aquatic environments.
HM5 : Soil Deal for Europe
Soil is alive, fragile, and largely ignored. Artistic research can reveal its hidden processes, cultural meanings, and role in food systems, climate, and biodiversity. This mission invites artists to collaborate with scientists and farmers to reconnect society with the ground beneath our feet.
Indeed, what if your art and research could help drive the change needed?
By embracing the Horizon Missions for all the topics mentioned above, FilmEU WIRE invites PhD students to propose bold, experimental interdisciplinary pilot projects that tackle those topics through artistic research. In a world grappling with change and challenges, how can artistic practices reimagine sustainability, amplify scientific understanding, and inspire communities to act?
We seek artistic research projects that bring creative methodologies and enable us to think about change.
The proposal should ideally align with the topic and methodology of ongoing PhD research and could assist with, for instance: reimagining sustainable technologies through immersive artistic interpretations; enhancing public engagement; challenging preconceptions; and/or raise awareness. Consider all possibilities: from performances to installations. WIRE Horizon pilots aim to transform scientific insights into engaging narratives and experiences that spark curiosity, reflection, and action. This is an opportunity to foster scientific output, gain experience, and push the boundaries of what artistic research can achieve.
Learn more about all missions/topics you can choose from here.
What we offer
A student can be awarded up to 5.000 euros for a short research stay in one of the 8 labs of the WIRE hub. This budget is primarily meant to cover mobility and accommodation. Once the pilot is approved, the researcher should contact their HEI research coordinator to articulate the logistics.
The research stay in one of the 8 WIRE HUB labs should take place between June 2026 and April 2027. You are invited to participate in the Artistic Research Exhibition during the WIRE Summit in April 2027 (Bratislava) to present your work.
These are the following labs:
Tallinn University (BFM) Production Lab (Tallinn) – Offers support artistic research and training in cinematic storytelling, HDR workflows, and sound innovation.
LUCA Spatial Computing Lab (Brussels) – Interdisciplinary research in XR and spatial computing; strengthen doctoral and practice-based research.
LMTA Spatial Sound Lab (Vilnius) – Immersive sound research and cross-institutional collaboration within FilmEU.
Lusófona Virtual Production Studio (Lisbon) – Hybrid film production methods and virtual production in research and education.
IADT Immersive Lab (Dublin) – Immersive media techniques with the potential to foster innovation across creative disciplines.
NATFA 3D MAPL (Sofia) – Sustainable materials and hybrid digital-physical workflows for eco-conscious media production.
VIA AI Frontier Lab (Aarhus) – AI-driven filmic storytelling, prototype innovation, and promote AI literacy in artistic research.
VŠMU Sound Lab (Bratislava) – Immersive sound design and foster collaboration across FilmEU and WIRE research communities.
The 8 WIRE Labs that comprise the FilmEU Imagination Center offer a wide range of possibilities in terms of equipment and their potential uses. This provides a host of opportunities for collaboration and exchange of ideas in the physical and virtual production of research outputs in their most elaborate and experimental forms.
Please visit the link for a comprehensive account of each lab across the alliance.
Requirements
– Student pilots can engage senior or junior researchers and technical researchers based at partner HEIs.
– The lead applicant should be a PhD researcher.
– Artistic research outputs will be presented at the WIRE Summit in Bratislava, in 2027. More information on are.filmeu.eu
Help during the application
All researchers interested in applying for a Horizon Mission pilot project can also attend the on-line Writers Room event on 26 February. The Writers Room is an online information and collaboration session designed to support prospective applicants in developing strong proposals.
The deadline for applications is 24 April 2026.
Please send the following application form in PDF to André Rui Graça (Lusófona University) to andre.graca@ulusofona.pt. A selection commission consisting of members of staff from each FilmEU partner is responsible for ranking proposals for funding on a competitive basis.
For additional information, please contact André Rui Graça (Lusófona University, andre.graca@ulusofona.pt).