IBERMEDIA NEXT has opened its call for applications for its next line of funding today (Friday, May 12). The initiative, which is framed within the IBERMEDIA Program and is financed with NextGenerationEU funds, proposes grants of up to €150,000 and a support program valued at up to €95,000 for digital animation or live-action projects that include a high percentage of animation.
Applications are now open through the new website, ibermedianext.com.
In addition to the online call, a presentation on IBERMEDIA NEXT will also take place during the Ibero-American Animation Quirino Awards in San Cristóbal de la Laguna, Tenerife (May 11-13) before the professional community of the sector, with the participation of Víctor Herreruela (Coordinator of the Ibermedia Technical Unit) and attended by José Luis Farias (Executive Producer of the Quirino Awards), and on behalf of The Ibero-American Animation League, José Iñesta (Director of the Pixelatl Festival) together with Silvina Cornillón (Manager of Animation! Ventana Sur).
The presentation will be held at 6:30 p.m. (Canary Islands time, UTC/GMT+1) in the Function Room of Lercaro Palace within the Quirino Awards official program. This conference, which has pursued its goal of connecting the Ibero-American animation community for six years, is one of the allied organizations of IBERMEDIA NEXT together with The Ibero-American Animation League, comprising the Quirino Awards, the Pixelatl Festival (Guadalajara, Mexico) and Animation! Ventana Sur (Buenos Aires, Argentina).
The discussion will offer attendees the opportunity to learn details about this unprecedented funding round from IBERMEDIA NEXT.
Promoting New Technologies in Animation
The period for receiving applications for the IBERMEDIA NEXT funding will continue until August 21, 2023, open to prototypes, teasers, pilots, short films and videoclips are eligible, among other options. The minimum project duration must be five minutes and it must use new technological tools for animation and/or open code tools in its development. The final result of these projects will be traditional audiovisual content, virtual reality (VR), extended reality (XR) or augmented reality (AR). Digital animation or hybrid projects are admitted, as long as the latter include at least 75% animation in the footage.
An innovative initiative of the IBERMEDIA Program, IBERMEDIA NEXT is framed within the “Spain, Audiovisual Hub of Europe” Component 25 of the European Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, and is financed by NextGenerationEU funds.
After careful consultation with the sector, these grants have been designed according to the needs of Ibero-American and Italian companies and creators that work in digital content and seek to explore the possibilities of new technologies, which need to find funding to continue creating, establish a solid network of contacts in the sector, or have a presence in the right contexts to make their work known.
Networking at the Virtual Plaza: The First Step
One of the intentions of IBERMEDIA NEXT is to facilitate connections between sector agents. For this reason, its website hosts the IBERMEDIA NEXT PLAZA tool for professionals — a free platform on which companies and producers from Spain, Italy and Portugal can connect with other companies and creators from all the member states of the IBERMEDIA Program. Registration on IBERMEDIA NEXT PLAZA will be the first necessary step to be able to present applications for the grants.
To create community and share the generated knowledge, IBERMEDIA NEXT also assumes the creation and maintenance of a large public archive that will include, among other useful materials, a series of video tutorials aimed at the animation and digital content sectors, to favor the professionalization of new talent thanks to the application of new technological tools in production processes.
Support Beyond the Economic Aid
In addition to an economic contribution of up to €150,000, the audiovisual projects chosen in this first line of funding of IBERMEDIA NEXT will also have a complete program of training, consultancy, promotion and dissemination, valued at €95,000. These projects and the companies and professionals that lead them will also benefit from networking opportunities, having the chance to participate in promotional activities in events of The Ibero-American Animation League (Pixelatl, Quirino Awards and Animation! Ventana Sur), as well as other sector events.
Training and support of the projects that benefit from the call for proposals, which will include group classes as well as individualized tutorials in an asynchronous online format, in addition to on-site advice during The Ibero-American Animation League events, will be private and personalized. There will be a series of consultants, outstanding professionals chosen by IBERMEDIA NEXT, who will guide the development of each project, providing ad hoc consultancy sessions that permit optimization of approaches and increase the possibilities for success within the industry. To adapt as much as possible to the needs of the selected projects, this group of highly qualified consultants will be chosen after the finalist projects have been selected.
In practical terms, the process begins by seeking partners for the project on IBERMEDIA NEXT PLAZA, creating the team and making the application within the deadline. After the decision has been made, in November 2023, the status of each application can be checked on ibermedianext.com. Over the following few months, IBERMEDIA NEXT will announce the members comprising the evaluation committee of the finalist projects, who are also commissioned with defining the strategic lines of the training program.
Building Innovative Avenues through IBERMEDIA
IBERMEDIA is an incentive program for the co-production and co-development of fiction, documentary and animation films and series, made in a community comprising 23 countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Spain, Guatemala, Honduras, Italy, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Uruguay and Venezuela.
Since its creation in 1998, the program has managed 31 financial aid calls, in which 1,099 grants have been given to the co-production of Ibero-American feature films, 1,143 grants for the development/co-development of series; grants for the promotion and distribution of 292 films and the exhibition of 298. In addition, more than 3,390 training grants have been awarded to sector professionals throughout Ibero-America.
IBERMEDIA NEXT is an initiative of the IBERMEDIA Program to house new pilot lines that support different productions from the classic lines of the Program: the application of new technologies in the field of digital animation and audiovisual content with a high percentage of animation.
It also has the collaboration of the Ibero-American Animation Quirino Awards and The Ibero- American Animation League, to which they belong together with Animation! Ventana Sur and the Pixelatl Festival. The Quirino Awards arose from the need to recognize talent in the Ibero-American animation industry, create connections and networks on both sides of the Atlantic and provide a framework to celebrate as a forum for co-production and business.
The Ibero-American Animation League was launched in 2018 as an alliance to strengthen collaboration and promote creators from the region. Launched by the Quirino Awards, the Pixelatl Festival and Animation! Ventana Sur, it arose in response to the increase in international co-productions between Ibero-American producers, with the aim of strengthening international cooperation in the region.
