The first edition of “Journalisme en devenir” (Aspiring journalism), a festival that aims to highlight the productions of journalism graduates, will take place on 28 and 29 September in Brussels, the event’s organisers announced on Wednesday. Ten productions will vie for one of the three awards, along with a cash prize of 500 euros. The winning productions, which will be chosen by a jury of professional journalists, will be broadcast on RTBF and BX1.
This first edition of the festival, launched by two former graduates of the journalism school of the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB - Brussels Free University), will feature the productions of journalism students of the ULB.
The Union of Former ULB Students (UAE), the university’s department of journalism, the Association of Former Students of the Journalism and Communication Department of the ULB (ADIC) and the non-profit association TerraTerre Films are also participating in the organization of the event.
The aim of the festival is to highlight the productions of new graduates and future journalists outside the academic context. However, this first edition was not limited to this year’s graduats.
“We found it impossible to select only fro this year’s new graduates,” Nicolas Franchomme, one of the festival’s originators, explained. Only audiovisual productions done within the framework of the end-of-programme memoirs were chosen, so selecting only new graduates would not have provided enough candidates. It would also not have given any opportunity to students who submitted their work in the second session, Franchomme emphasized.
The ULB’s journalism school thus increased the range to journalists who graduated up to four years ago. However, the selected productions were all done for their final-year memoirs.
For the upcoming editions of the festival, the organisers would like to include all journalism schools in French-speaking Belgium and to allow other branches, such as radio, web and written press, to participate.
“The medium-term objective would be to create a North-South festival by inviting journalism students and schools fro Francophone Europe and Africa to participate,” Franchomme disclosed.
The Brussels Times
