Post written by: Britta Gossel

Bringing media entrepreneurship education to life at Tallinn University was the aim of a study visit to Baltic Film, Media and Arts School, under the lead of Ulrike Rohn (Tallinn University, Estonia, ScreenMe project lead). From 31 August to 2 September 2022, Thomas Cyron (Jönköping International Business School, Sweden) and Britta Gossel (University for Sustainable Development Eberswalde, Germany) visited Estonia to advance the debate on media entrepreneurship in ScreenME-Net and to aggregate the creative input and experiences from partners into a future-oriented media entrepreneurship curriculum. Over the course of two meetings, they finalised the syllabus for a new media entrepreneurship course that started at Tallinn University’s BFMl in September 2022.

While students at Tallinn University will benefit from the experiences and teaching expertise of ScreenME-Net in the future, the visitors also had the pleasure of exploring the entrepreneurial spirit of Estonia. During a visit of Tallinn Creative Incubator, Thomas and Britta learned more about the entrepreneurial power of Estonian creative industries, as well as the challenges of entering international markets.

After visiting the opening ceremony of the Estonian academic year, which was an exciting new experience for the visitors, the ScreenME-Net team joined a virtual workshop on teaching effectuation, provided by SSES, a global platform for interdisciplinary education, and provided by Stockholm’s top six universities. The seminar on effectuation as one of the most popular approaches in entrepreneurship education provided additional insights for creating a media entrepreneurship curriculum.

On the second day, the visitors learned more about entrepreneurship teaching at Tallinn University. Katri-Liis Lepik introduced the university’s Social Entrepreneurship program, Silja Lassur and Külliki Tafel-Viia provided insights on StarterTallinn and the EIT HEI Initiative project UNICorn project, and Andres Jõesaar introduced the EIT HEI Initiative Project C-Accelerate. All participants presented their experiences in engaging the industry in teaching. While Britta Gossel and Thomas Cyron introduced the approaches from their universities, Ermo Säks introduced the experience with ELU projects at Tallinn University. Thanks to virtual meeting options, Sean Branagan from Newhouse School, Syracuse University, New York, joined this open seminar and shared experiences from the Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship.

Since the ScreenME-Net project has been challenged by the pandemic from its beginnings, this on-site study visit impelled the network regarding quality and outcomes to make the best of media entrepreneurship education for the future.