What ADAMI Media Prize is About

ADAMI’s Mission

The ADAMI Media Prize was created in 2015 to encourage filmmakers, journalists and audio-visual media professionals in the EU Eastern Partnership countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine) to promote topics of migration, tolerance and cultural diversity. The prize is open to broadcasters and audio-visual media producers in the six participating countries, rewarding outstanding TV, film and online programmes that deal with diversity-related issues. Alongside the prize, ADAMI organizes networking events and fosters exchange among media professionals in Eastern Europe and the EU.

The ADAMI Media Prize celebrates diversity as a core social value. We believe that the media play an important role in shaping public attitudes; by positively showcasing diversity, the media can contribute to peaceful coexistence between different groups in society.

Through the Prize, our goal is to encourage the media to counter messages of hate and ignorance, and to create a platform for networking and exchange among media professionals in the region and Europe.

The word ADAMI derives from the Georgian word adamiani, meaning human being, based on the first human, the biblical Adam. Above all, ADAMI is about people. Behind all TV programmes and media productions are people; they create and distribute images of people, made for people -- images that shape Europe's future.

Promoting the ADAMI Idea

Throughout the year, ADAMI organizes events promoting cultural diversity in the audio-visual media of the six participating countries. ADAMI Country Representatives are active in informing filmmakers, journalists and online media professionals about the initiative; they hold press conferences, briefings, or lectures at universities and film schools, take part in TV talk shows and radio programmes. The ADAMI Media Prize Jury Sessions are major networking events each competition year. All ADAMI Media Prize submissions are judged by a jury panel of media experts who meet in an EaP host city and have contact with local journalists and civil society representatives. Major public figures in the EaP countries and beyond are invited to attend the ADAMI Media Prize Gala Award Ceremony, where prize winners are announced via a live international broadcast.

But ADAMI’s activities don’t end there. Opportunities through ADAMI abound; ADAMI Talks is a format conducted in cooperation with universities to create dialogue between media and their audience. Winning films and websites are presented at international film festivals, special screenings are held at public institutions like the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. Each prize year, a young journalist has the opportunity to win the ADAMI Fellowship, a one-month fellowship at the French-German cultural TV channel ARTE in Strasbourg, MDR in Leipzig or Deutsche Welle in Berlin.

At the ADAMI Dialogue Conferences, media experts from the Eastern Partnership as well as from the EU meet each other to exchange knowledge and discuss new strategies on working with diversity topics. ADAMI Tandem matches journalists from the Eastern Partnership Countries with their colleagues from the EU to form Tandems and co-produce news reports, that are broadcasted in both countries. At the ADAMI Studio Film Editing Counselings, film production companies and filmmakers from the Eastern Partnership region have the opportunity to work on their projects with international editing and filmmaking experts.

Whether working to establish a network, building partnerships or creating an audio-visual archive on cultural diversity media content within the six EaP countries, the ADAMI idea is growing.